Posts Tagged ‘habits’

There have been lots of books written about changing behaviors like avoiding procrastination, having good relationships, eating less food but in almost all cases, these won’t work. These won’t work because the behaviors are like stems in a tree, if you cut down a stem, they will come back again after some time. Instead we have to attack the root. We humans behave differently and see the world differently by the stories we deeply believe in.  In other words, if you examine the story (root) and change it, the behaviors shifts effortlessly.

Here are a few examples

Parent-children Relationship Stories

If a parent believes the story “that kids cannot be trusted fully and will never listen to us”. Right from a young age, when the parent says something and the kids don’t listen, they shout and make sure the kids listen to them.  When the kids go to school, there will always be clashes. These clashes will continue through out the parent’s entire life till the parent moves on to the next world.

What if the parent looks at his story and says… Let me change it. Let me believe that “Kids can be trusted, if I am trustworthy to them”.  Now the scene shifts and s/he will always be open with them and s/he will make sure that the kids can trust him always with anything, now the whole 50-60 years of the parent’s life will be very rewarding.  I have personally seen examples of both kinds of parents and I am sure you have seen too. The only simple difference is both strongly believed in a story.

Entrepreneur Stories

Richard Branson and Warren buffett believed the story that “life and business should be fun” and so, they choose a profession which they loved. Steve Jobs deeply believes in Zen philosophy which shows up in all of apple’s products (simplicity).

Our life is completely governed by the stories we deeply believe. Most of the times we never know that these stories dictate our life i.e. they are hidden to us like a blind spot while driving.

So, how do we recognize our stories, whenever we are frustrated or things don’t go the way we want, we can stop and say, this is not working the way I want “because”. Whatever comes after the “because” is the story we choose to believe.

We can choose to believe in a different story.

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Tagged as: active garage, beliefs, Entrepreneurship, habits, Innovation, parents, stories, vijay peduru

If we analyze deeply, we postpone because we need to learn new habits and skills and accumulating these habits and skills seems harder. We keep saying to ourselves that we will learn these skills once we achieve the position or once we start the business.  Days, months and years pass by and we still do not reach where we want to reach. What can we do to stop this drift? We can start in baby steps right this moment ( ok,.you can wait till you finish reading this post!)  and keep growing gradually..

“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight”

“Failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated every day”.

“Success is a few simple disciplines practiced every day”.

So, if we take any area(health, money, joy)  in our life, we need to start accumulating new habits and skills now. We can start with baby steps and keep moving. A few baby steps are:

• Health: We can start doing yoga or exercise joyfully ten minutes a day starting today
• Money : We can start reading books for thirty minutes every day by entrepreneurs on how to serve people and make money starting today.
• Joy:  We can read spiritual or books on the wisdom of leading a joyful life for 10 minutes a day to learn how to be joyful starting today.

Averting failures, however unattainable and insurmountable it might sounds, is a simple art of going in the right direction, in a disciplined manner.

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Tagged as: active garage, direction, discipline, drift, Entrepreneurship, failures, habits, Jim Rohn, skills, successes, vijay peduru, well being

Welcome to the penultimate post in this 12-part series on QUALITY, titled #QUALITYtweet – 12 Ideas to Build a Quality Culture.

Here are the first ten posts, in case you would like to go back and take a look:

1. Quality #1: Quality is a long term differentiator
2. Quality #2: Cure Precedes Prevention
3. Quality #3: Great People + Good Processes = Great Quality
4. Quality #4: Simplifying Processes
5. Quality #5: Customers are your “Quality Partners”
6. Quality #6: Knowing what needs improvement
7. Quality #7: Productivity and Quality
8. Quality #8: Best Practices are Contextual
9. Quality #9: Quality of Relationship and Communication
10. Quality #10: Inspection can be a waste if…

#QUALITYtweet Critical question: Knowing that

people will change only if they want to, how do you

make sure they “want” to change?

Process Improvement is a “change” game and implementing change isn’t always easy. In case of process improvement, the challenge is to change habits and behaviors of your people. That makes it even more difficult.

People change, not by “force” but by their “intent”. With force, people may dispassionately comply with your processes, but for true involvement, their intent needs a direction. With this as a given, critical questions are:

• How do you make sure that you implement change by driving intent of people?
• How do you make sure that people are passionately involved in change?

The answer to these is “Change Leadership”. Leading a change means undertaking right initiatives, mobilizing resources, addressing soft aspects like motivation, overcoming hurdles and aligning the teams to make it happen. How can change leadership drive process improvement initiative? Here are a few pointers:

• Accurately define what needs a change: Apply 80:20 rule to identify what needs improvement. It is easy to align people when they know that they are improving the right areas that have maximum business/operational impact.
• Create a change time line: Humans work best when they work against a time line. We often tend to get complacent when there are no deadlines. Reasonable pressure helps us become more creative. Create a time line by when change will be implemented with a step-by-step action plan. This also creates a sense of urgency.
• Engage people: People tend to commit themselves to things they are involved in. Involve practitioners and managers in defining the change. They are the ones who will be impacted by the change. Engage them by explaining them the larger context, vision and business need. When they know the larger picture, they can align their actions accordingly. They also need to know the “What’s in it for me?” part. How will they become more effective? How will this change help them improve their performance? They want to know this.
• Review progress periodically: If you don’t monitor your people, you give them a reason to slow down. Have short and effective meetings (in group or one-on-one) with people involved in change. Take a stock of how things are going. Understand their problems. Help them do better. They get help and you get the broader picture. If you hit some roadblocks, you still have chance to re-align. Review early and often. This is also your opportunity to share progress and motivate people involved in improvement initiatives.
• Lead: Give them the context and set them free. Micromanagement on tasks can kill creativity and morale. Be there to help them, but let them do it on their own. People learn the most when they try to do it themselves. They will make mistakes. Help them overcome and share the lessons learned. Set right examples for them to follow.
• Share rewards: when you link participation with rewards, it will help you get voluntary participation from people. But after they have participated, it is only your leadership abilities that will keep them going. You will still have lot of people who will willingly participate.
• Keep rotating teams: Once a change cycle is implemented, induct new team members in the improvement team. You maximize the opportunities for everyone to get involved in defining improvements. Broader the participation, wider the acceptance of change.

Last but not the least, people engage when they see continuity of effort. If your improvement initiative is temporary or ad-hoc, people will not engage beyond the first cycle. When people see consistent results from a process improvement group, they willingly participate.

Process improvement is a journey and not a destination. Who you travel with matters a lot. Choose the right people and get them to swing into action. Your business will thank you for that!

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Tagged as: behaviors, business, Change, comply, context, creativity, deadlines, effective, engage, force, habits, hurdles, intent, lead, Leadership, managers, micromanagement, mobilizing, morale, passion, practitioners, process improvement, progress, review, rewards, urgency, vision