Posts Tagged ‘Act’

Two key computers crashed irreversibly last week and an unobservant driver hit my car. Business deadlines can’t be moved. The next 3 weeks are on the road. What to do? Pause, breathe, think and act. It’s just another project, one that is rather personal but still a project just the same.

Pause and Ask The Right Questions

A series of questions helped steer through this project ask:

• Even if it is unrelated, did these events occur while pursuing what is best (to do)?
• Separate from personal feelings and desires can I accept myself, the situation, and the people involved?
• Can an adequate list of the principles and constraints be listed by a stakeholder? This list started at the moment of the accident and computer crashes and includes the policeman, other driver, insurance agents, computer repairman, clients, etc.
• Can personal limits along with available resources be listed?
• Is there a risk management plan in place for dealing with loss of time, money, and resources?
• Can an adequate plan be built to get back on track and stay on track? Can that plan adapt to new information?

Breathe and Think

Before getting on to using the questions it is worth pointing out the saving grace to all this is the “what ifs” thought through over the years along with implementation of associated strategies. It is in line with an earlier blog regarding the  “Titanic,” i.e., instead of trying to design a ship that wouldn’t sink it would have been better to design in response to the question, “What do we do if the ship does sink?” Applied here it’s translated into saying well in advance, “It could happen, lean into it, generate a plan,” instead of just reacting to problems by saying, “This shouldn’t be happening to me because…!”

Take Action

Actions comprise weaving the results of pursuing the questions with the risk response strategies. Centeredness has taken shape in the midst of the anger, disappointment, frustration, etc., This centeredness surfaced the question,

Do I stay with what can be done or get lost in reacting?

One example of staying with what CAN be done involves some key databases and revolves around asking, “What if the hourly backups that should never corrupt actually do?” The worst-case costs led to additional backups on separate equipment for especially important files beyond the imaged external hard drives. THAT strategy paid off handsomely. Somehow the hourly files were corrupted and there has been no time to explore. The additional belts-and-suspenders backups saved the day. They are running well with the new compute. The jury is still out on the second computer, which is being fixed under warranty.

The gods of blogging must have been watching all this. When going into the computer shop a conversation was under way. It went something like this, “We couldn’t recover any data. You can send them to a recovery specialist. Prices start at $700/hard drive and go up from there. Since you have several hard drives that need recovered…well you can see where the math is going.”

Pause, breathe, think, and act. The more it is done when everything is okay the better it will be when things go south.

Did I mention my car was hit? With that there is repair, a rental, insurance adjusters, claim adjusters …whoa!…got to get packing! Plane to catch. It looks like more pausing, breathing, and thinking while on the road. Sleep will be sometime in May.

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Tagged as: accident, Act, active garage, backup, breathe, center for change management, Change Management, crashes, gary monti, hard disk, pause, Project Management, project reality check, recovery, specialist, think, titanic

Do the following statements sound familiar to you?

“I have not been lucky enough”

“My efforts being put and the results that I have got are no match”

“I am really trying very hard, not sure why I am not achieving what I am set for”

“Not been able to have a breakthrough”

“I am not sure where to start from”

One of the reasons for this conversation/situation is that, the person is not grounded well, from the context where he/she is operating from at that point in time. Their expectations and actions taken are not aligned at that point in time and hence the results are not great.

Success is a function of Context, Time, Plan and Action.

Let me introduce you to a personal assessment technique to get well grounded. Thus providing a platform to have access to great results.

The Personal Grounding Chart shown below has 4 quadrants: (i) Student, (ii) Specialist, (iii) Employee and (iv) Entrepreneur;

… spread over 2 dimensions: (a) Involvement and (b) Responsibility

Guidelines to plot yourself on to the chart:

1. Set your context and the time and see how involved you are/want to be AND what responsibility are you taking/ready to take in that area of work/initiative that is important to you and your life.

a. Plot with the context and time being set.

b. DO NOT pre-determine your interest of quadrant before plotting.

c. It’s important to know that whichever quadrant you are in, you are fine, whole and complete.

2. Once you have plotted, three aspects gets accomplished:

a. Realization: it gets you grounded and fetches you to the platform of Reality

b. Equips you for right skilling

c. Provides the right space to set new goals, have an action plan, take action, set right expectations and enjoy the results

3. It’s important to know that you can migrate from any quadrant to any other quadrant at any point in time by altering your involvement and responsibilities in that context of work/initiative.

4. The Intrepreneurship area in the center deserves a special mention. It is a virtual space which is available in all the four quadrants. It’s the space where the individuals have a very special responsibility and involvement, operating within a structure.

Let me illustrate the usage of this chart with an example:

In my life, I have been a serial entrepreneur in the Information Technology space. However, if I am interested in the space of healthcare or want to perform surgeries I assess myself as incompetent in performing surgeries at this point in time. In this context, I cannot get deeply involved in it nor take lots of responsibility. I move to the ‘STUDENT’ quadrant. Now, being well grounded, I can have a plan and take action accordingly and set a goal to migrate to the ‘SPECIALIST’ quadrant at a set timeframe.

Get Grounded; Set Right Expectation; Go Take Action…
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Tagged as: Act, Action, active garage, business, employee, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, leader, Leadership, management, naveen lakkur, responsibility, student specialist

Ever wonder:

1. Why some people are satisfied doing the same thing day in day out and continue to live in their ‘comfort zones’.

2. Why some people resist change as if it’s the last thing they would want to happen to and around them?

3. Why some people keep finding themselves in situations where they keep coping?

It’s called Inertia.

For your reference, here is the dictionary meaning of inertia: “a property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force“.

Luckily for us, the mechanism of life ensures there are always external forces in our environment that affect our tranquil states. Yet, most of us continue to ignore them or just pretend they do not exist… until, we encounter a big force, that lifts us off the ground and displaces us to a new unfamiliar place, thus calling for action on our part. This is the force people experience when they suddenly find themselves in a situation where they need to cope. This is the force people experience when a major change happens in their organization that impacts them.

This force exists. Period.

You can choose to:

• Ignore it (not for long)
• Avoid it (not for long, again)
• ANTICIPATE & ACT or … in other words – Get rid of your “Inertia Man”!

Tagged as: Act, active garage, Anticipate, business, Change, cope, Entrepreneurship, http://activegarage.com, Inertia, Leadership