How I used to be highly Judgmental..

The ‘Professor’ got up and went to the Board to make his point. I and my colleagues exchanged glances and our eyes smiled at each other without being obvious to the ‘Chamchas’ around. The scene was our regular Monthly Performance review meeting and the ‘Professor’ was our Boss who was going to the Board to make his point by drawing some pictures / models on the board. He loved illustrating his point with a model. So, I labelled him as ‘Professor’ and enjoyed making fun him behind his back. Not a very harmful fun. But, I labeled him anyway. You would have noticed that I have labeled a certain others in the meeting as ‘Chamchas’ too. 

I was preparing to meet ‘My enemy’ for a short review meeting. I was expecting to hear a lot of objections from him for my proposals and was getting ready as to how I can ‘take him on’. This ‘My enemy’ was again my Boss in another setting and I always expect trouble from him as he ‘does not like me’. I always used to go to him with a lot of preparation. But, somehow I always used to lose the battle/s. 

I was very happy I have ‘My big supporter’ in the coming meeting. I know he is going to back me up on the few targets that I have not achieved. The meeting started and I started presenting my KPIs. When I reached the failed KPIs, I expected a word of encouragement from ‘My big supporter’. What I got was a cautious ‘you should better and you should do it fast’. But, still I felt ‘My big supporter’ is my only hope in this company with a lot of ‘enemies’. 

I just came home from office and was getting down from my car. The ‘Pain in the a***’ neighbor wished me and wanted to know how my day was. I wished him with a brief hi and ran in side the home as I ‘knew’ he was going to drill me on my opinion about several happenings in our residential community and try to enlist my support to his views. 

The list can be long and unending. I always used to have an opinion about everyone and everything around me and the list of ‘good’ people and ‘bad’ people was always growing. 

What is wrong with being Judgmental?

Looking back, I realise that I was being highly critical of the world around me. I was suffering some consequences of my behavior which I may not have realized at all. I would have taken all these as ‘normal’.

01.  Missing the other point of view: By filtering what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ for me, I would have lost the opportunity of listening to the other point of view. I was limiting myself in to a cocoon and missing out several Learning opportunities.

02.  Limiting my world: By defining what was my world, I excluded a lot of people from it. Probably lost out the opportunity to make many more good friends. 

03.  Making it tough for myself: I always was thinking about the ways and means of tackling the ‘other guys’. Putting a lot of strain on myself. I was actively contributing to more similar behavior from everyone around as I have put filters and not accepting anything else. 

04.  Making it difficult for my Bosses: I had been a consistently good performer wherever I worked. My Bosses were having a tough time with one of their Stars being highly judgmental about the people around and hence dividing the organization in to pro and anti. 

How not to be Judgmental?

Over years, I have realized that I can be non-judgmental.  

01.  Be in the present moment: Look at what is happening now around you and deal with it. Try not to put the color of ‘your experience’ on everything around you. While I would have ‘certain experience’ in the past, that does not mean it would repeat every time. By responding to the moment genuinely with current facts, I am not punishing people for something from the past or giving them credit in the current situation for something from the past. 

02.  Look at the issue and not the person: Many a times I used to associate the person with some behavior. I learned how to look at the issue and not the person. This helped me in being in the present moment too. Others were more convinced that I was responding on the situation and not picking on them. 

03.  Chase what is right:One needs to go for what is right and not what either I or the other person likes/ dislikes. This requires a skill to look at the issue from a distance. You have to imagine yourself to be out of the situation and not part of the situation. To solve a problem, you should not become part of the problem. 

04.  Express your opinion nicely:I still remember how one of my ex-bosses told me not to be ‘disagreeable’, but encouraged me to ‘disagree’. You can disagree with someone. But, by being ‘disagreeable’ you are alienating yourself from the person. 

05.  Resist your ‘Urge to Control’:Very often one acts from the urge to control the situation and thus take away the control from others. You would feel if you have to ‘win’ the other guy has to ‘lose’. You are not happy unless you see the feeling of ‘having lost’ on the other person’s face! You need to have confidence in yourself that you are chasing ‘what is right’ and not ‘what you want’. This will result in a discussion with the issue on the table. Otherwise the issue will be either in your lap or in the lap of the other person. It is almost like two children fighting for a Toy. 

06.  Welcome Learning opportunities:You need to accept that there is lot to learn for you in the world and when someone presents a different point of view or does not agree with you, it is a learning opportunity. 

How does it help ‘Being Not Judgmental’? 

01.  Liberation: It liberates you from the need to look at how to defeat the others. You no longer are tense getting in to meetings with your ‘enemies’. You may start enjoying your interaction with others. You will be much more ‘at peace’ with everything around you. 

02.  Learning: You would start learning much more as your world has suddenly expanded and you are able to expand your friend circle. You would become receptive to much more learning from the universe. 

03.  Problem solver: You would turn out to be a much better Problem Solver as you are able to connect up to many more people and look at things as they are. 

04.  Better Leader: You would become a much more accepted Leader as everyone around you start experiencing you as much more ‘fair’ and a ‘respectable leader’. 

If you are non judgmental, Your Life can become a much better Learning  and enjoyable journey. I think that is a good incentive to become non judgmental!!

END

I have been on a Self-improvement journey for as long as I can remember and I believe it is so with most of the people around us. As an Executive Coach, I had the opportunity to work with many leaders and I enjoyed my interactions with them as every story is a beautiful one and many of the improvements that they do inspire me to do something in my own sphere. Very often, I used to fret over my Improvement journey and then look at others and say that they are not improving much. I have observed this behavior with many others too. We feel we are improving so much that we look at others and wonder how lazy they are and how they are not changing at all. 

Improve on your own Scale

As part of my Coaching a number of Senior leaders, I coached the MD of a Company. I kept feeling that this person was not improving much. I kept getting frustrated. I felt the person is not responding to me very well. But, the Coachee had been seting up the meetings for Coaching and attending all of them sincerely. I expressed to him that there is no point in engaging if there is no improvement happening. What he then said opened my eyes to different dimensions and possibilities. He listed out a number of improvements that he had achieved over the past few months and expressed a lot of gratitude that I have been able to help him a lot.  When you look at the changes that he was claiming, they were all genuine. But, in my view they were all very small improvements that do not merit even a mention. 

But, who I am I to set the scale for him? He is improving on his own scale. That is what actually matters. This tendency to continuously improve is important. I can not say it is a smaller scale or inferior scale. It is a different scale. We all have different scales. From then on I learned to measure the improvement of people around me on their own scale. It is another matter that they should take feedback about their improvement journey. But, I can not say they are not improving on the basis of my own Scale and my own perceptions. 

Who will feel the improvement?

While we feel we are improving, the improvement will be felt by people in different circles around you.

01.  People in the outermost circle: If we are trying to improve in a particular area, the people who hardly know us will be the first to feel the benefit of that improvement. If we are trying to be more pleasant with people, we are most likely to try out this new behavior with people who are not known to us or those whom we just know very superficially. The reason is that we do not have much activity with them and therefore we do not have any ‘flash points’ with them.

02.  People in the Second circle: If we are trying to improve ourselves, the people at the office (other than Boss and close colleagues) may be the next level people who may feel the improvement in our behavior. It will take some time to reach this situation. But, when you persist with your improvement journey you would notice that the people who are at office / people whom you meet regularly may feel the difference.

03.  People in the Third circle: These are typically Family members / Boss at office. When we persist with our improvement journey and keep pushing ourselves for next level improvement, we will break thru to the next circle. We may start becoming more comfortable with our Boss and Brother/ Father at home. They may start seeing some improvement in you.

04.  The loner in the Fourth circle: As you progress further, you would start being good to your Spouse! Somehow you may always feel that you can take that liberty with your spouse, you can vent with your spouse and so on. It takes quite a bit of effort to improve yourself in the eyes of your Spouse. 

05.  Your ‘Self’ in the Fifth circle: If your spouse starts noticing improvement in you, then after some more persistence you may feel ‘genuinely’ improving yourself ! This is because even though your spouse may be very close to you, he/she is still another person. When YOU feel genuinely improving yourself, then the real deep improvement starts happening. Very often we know ‘BEST’ about ourselves. Isn’t it ? 

Essentials for Self-Improvement

If you want to genuinely improve yourself, there are are five essentials that you need to pay attention to:

01.  Importance of Feedback: Marshall Goldsmith the celebrated International Coach says that Leaders who take feedback tend to improve much more than those leaders who do not take Feedback. While we have to improve on our own scale, we need to understand the effect that we are having on people around us and improve ourselves in a way in which we can generate better outcomes together. After all as Leaders we have to work with people around us to deliver some good outcomes. However good leader you may be, you can not do everything yourself.

02.  Partners in Progress: It is good to have a bunch of people around us who can give us straight feedback without a bias. You need to choose wisely as many of us do not have this skill of observation and the critical skill of giving feedback objectively. It would help to arrive at this small group over a period of time. 

03.  Take professional help as needed: I realized that using some techniques and using some professional help can really speed up the improvement and help you save on time. You may improve on your own. But, you may lose out on some opportunities as you are not ready. It makes commercial sense too to take professional help. 

04.  Planning your improvement can help: Planning about your goals and where you want to improve in next one year / next 6 months / next quarter / next month / next week / tomorrow will definitely help. The more detail you get in to, the more failures you can avoid. 

05.  Have a higher goal: Without a higher goal in your life and career, you can not get the full energy out of yourself. You will not work ‘full on’. I spoke about this in another article. 

While all of us have our own journeys of improvement, it would help to make it more planned and use good methodology and tools to get better results from same effort. 

Please share your learnings from your journey ! 

While working with several companies in my career as an Employee and as a Consultant,  I have learned that it is very important to ensure  all employees across the Company are having Clear Targets for their work that hour, that day, that week, that Month, that Quarter and that year. As you look at the senior people, the targets for the Three year period too become very important. At each of these levels, the Process for achieving the Targets also has to be clear. 

Shop floor : Here and Now

If you look at the Shop floors of Manufacturing companies, you can understand this aspect very easily. 

If the Shop floor is using Lean concepts and the flow of Material is good, you can see that the target of each Worker is very clear and so is the Process of achieving it. He/She knows what work he/she has to do and how much he/she has to deliver each hour. Hence, the work moves at a brisk pace and production happens. When the work happens without break, the energy levels on the shop floor are really good. The Supervisor is happy the full Production is happening, the Worker is happy he/she has delivered what is expected of him/her. The Quality also in this situation will be at its’ best as there is a rhythm in the working of the whole Shop floor. The same Shop floor looks disorganized and without direction when the Production is getting stopped frequently due to the many reasons that the shops deal with. The Quantity suffers and also the Quality as there is no rhythm.

Recognise the potential ambiguity..

We are able to understand about the work on the Shop floor as the work there is visible and you can see the work happening / not happening clearly. But, the same concept is applicable to ALL the work in a company. The other work that happens in offices is not as clear as the one that happens on the Shop floor. This is the reason there can be more variables with reference to this work that the Staff does. The ambiguity increases as the work moves away from Shop floor. You would have noticed that the work that is done by ‘Strategy Function’ in your company is much more vague than the work that is done in .. say, Material Procurement function.

For your Employee to be Productive, the Target (What) has to be clear and he/she has to be clear about the Process of achieving the Target (How). Without the ‘What’ and ‘How’ being clear, none of the Companies can deliver what is expected. This ‘What’ and ‘How’ have to be clear at ALL levels of the Company. It is not enough if the Head of the Company is clear about his/her vision. This clarity has to go down to the last member in the Company. 

This is quite a simple concept. But, my experience is that these two elements are simply not clear in most of the Companies. Some companies do not have both the ‘What’ and ‘How’. Some may have the ‘What’ in some areas and not in other areas. Most of the Companies would be clear about how much Production has to happen as this is a physical activity visible on the Shop floor. They may not have clear Targets for anything else in the Company. Resultantly, only Production happens regularly. 

Essentials for a good Target based Work Management 

01.  Diagnosis: Every Company should start with understanding their current performance. For a Company having Financial year as Apr-March, they should do this Diagnosis sometime in January of the Year. They should Diagnose in every Function and as a Company, how well they have performed in the Current year. What did they do well and what they did not do well on the basis of data. They should draw out the Lessons from their performance in the past year. One needs to make this a very Structured exercise. 

02.  Fixing the Targets: After understanding the performance of the Company at various levels, the Targets have to be fixed for Various levels starting at the top. The head of the Company has to spell out the Big targets like Top line, Bottom line, Efficiency of various Business aspects etc. The Targets of the Head of the Company should reflect the ambition of the Company and it has to be in line with their Three year plan. 

03.  Cascading the Targets down the Organisation: The Targets have to be deployed to the last level in the Company using the Deployment methodology. The Organizational alignment in terms of Targets is important. We can’t have a situation of every one in the Company achieving their target and still the Company not achieving its’ targets. Usage of Technology is recommended here. A Good Target Deployment Software would be useful. 

04.  Break up the Targets: It is not enough to have Targets for the full year/ Quarter and so on. The Targets have to be broken up to Month / Week / Day. This is where the Quality of Leadership in a Company will be seen. How well can the Leadership help the employees to link the actions of today to the Targets. What should be done today to achieve the Target for the Week / Month etc. This is easy on the Shop floor and regarding Production. But, not very easy with reference to.. say Quality improvement / Cost reduction etc. 

05.  Ensure the Tightness of the Targets: I have seen that the Leaders in many Companies do not pay enough attention to this aspect. They feel their teams already working hard and can’t take big targets. This is a veiled populism and ‘Subsidy mindset’ ! This is one disease that can kill a company as it ensures the whole company under achieves. Teams will be able to achieve more if they are guided well. 

06.  Detail the ‘How’ part: The Targets will not be achieved, if you don’t encourage your team to detail the ‘How’ part. They need to understand the problems that they have in each of the areas and then put a detailed plan of ‘How they will achieve’ the Targets. Every company should spend good amount of time on this aspect. Every minute spent on this aspect is worthwhile. I see that a good number of companies do not pay attention to this and keep aiming at same target every year and failing regularly !! It is not enough for the Leaders to point out a ‘Pie in the Sky’ and leave it there. 

07.  Revisit the Targets every two months: The Target has to be just tight and right to each employee. If the Target is too easy, then the Company will not progress well and if the Target is too tight, the employee concerned will give up and again the Company will not progress well. The Leaders have to look out for this through a detailed process of ‘Target checking’ every two months. They have to be alerted if someone is easily achieving or not achieving at all. 

08.  Bigger Initiatives: Some times to achieve tight Targets in a function, one may have to start bigger Initiatives. Eg. If the Big Cost reduction target has to be achieved in the Company this year, the whole Staff may have to be trained in Cost reduction methodologies.  The Company should have BIG targets in a few areas and launch Broader Initiatives to help Teams to hit them. 

If a Company takes care of the above, then it is preparing the Company to achieve something superlative in the coming year ! 

How is Target Deployment in your company ?  Pl share.

END

We see that some companies have a great energy within them and they see improvements on a regular basis. These Companies continually grow and rediscover themselves. I call them ‘Happening Companies’. While ‘Happening companies’ is a small percentage, most of the Companies struggle to develop this internal ‘Positive Energy’ that helps the Company to keep improving and keep rediscovering itself.

The ‘Happening Companies’ may be growing aggressively. But, all companies growing aggressively are NOT ‘Happening Companies’. The Growth may come due to other reasons too. 

The ‘Happening Companies’ attract a lot of Talent for right reasons. The ‘Happenings’ make a good story for the Good Talent to come to this company. 

The Customers of the ‘Happening Companies’ would be able to see a high energy in engaging with them. 

The Suppliers of the ‘Happening Companies’ will be continuously pushed to Improve. But, these Suppliers would enjoy this pushing and for many of them the association with these ‘Happening Companies’ would give them life time learnings. 

The ‘Happening Companies’ would hit the maximum profitability of their life time during this phase.

The status of ‘Happening Companies’ may not be a permanent one. A Company may reach this stage and it may slip from it too. 

How do Organizations develop a ‘Positive Energy’ to Improve themselves continually? 

This requires a combination of factors.

01.  Growth orientation and Fire in the belly at Leadership level:The Leadership in the ‘Happening Companies’ would be highly Growth oriented. They believe that they can achieve a lot and keep pushing for improvements on a continuous basis. They would be having a restlessness in them and some people may call it as having ‘fire in the belly’. The Leaders would be able to transmit this fire to others in the organization. 

02.  Clear Goals for the Organization at all levels:The Employees at all levels would be having ‘CLEAR Goals’. There would be a certain purposefulness in the company. Everyone in the company would be walking around with a clear purpose. The connectivity between their goals and their actions would be very clear. As they are able to see results from their actions, they are continuously in a highly motivated status. 

03.  Freedom to the Important Players in the organization to create:No company was built or improved by one person. There would be a team of Senior people who would be working in a motivated manner. They would be having freedom to create in the ‘Happening Company’. The team would be working as a team and producing consistent results. The Leadership would be motivated to give more Freedom as they are able to see great results!! 

04.  Passion towards work: The BEST out of Human beings cannot come out unless they touch their emotions. In a ‘Happening Company’, the Employees would be involved in the work with Positive emotions. They take pride in working in the company. They do not mind going the extra mile for the company. This is the biggest factor in making a Company ‘Happening’. In most of the companies, it is a fashion statement to say that they are ‘Professional’ and no emotions. But, emotions is what makes the BEST come out of human beings. We should have emotions. But, we should not become emotional about results.  

05.  A full time Excellence team: Structure wise a full time Excellence team is a must to sustain the good work in the ‘Happening Company’. The Excellence team has to be owned by people at the top.  This is a very important piece in completing the puzzle of ‘Happening Company’. 

06.  Focus on People Development & Learning in the Company: The ‘Happening Company’ would have a high focus on Learning and People Development. The Development of People will not be done only by the HR Department. Every Senior person in the Company would own the Training and Development. There would be several events happening in the company that are for developing the employees. 

As earlier said, the ‘Happening Company’ tag is not a permanent one. A Company can lose its’ status when something slips from the above parameters. 

It is the responsibility of the Leadership to sustain this. To sustain this, a Leader has to go beyond his own limitations. For this, he has to know his limitations and acknowledge them. Once he/she acknowledges them, they can be addressed quite easily. 

END