Book Review : The Coaching Habit

GoodRead, , , ,

Coaching is one of the most important tools a leader can use to make his team more efficient, productive, and interested in achieving the common goal. However, knowing this fact, we typically struggle to ask the right question to coach one. Some time, coaching becomes mentoring and loses its focus. The focus of Coaching is to make one more productive and help him achieve his short-term goals. It’s significant to note that coaching is a collaborative process, where the coach and coachee work together towards the cochiee’s goals. The coach provides guidance, support, and expertise, while the coachee actively participates, takes ownership of their development, and implements the recommended strategies.

The process necessitates a focus on short-term objectives, thereby necessitating the coachee’s efficacy in assisting the coachee in attaining their desired outcomes and enhancing their effectiveness. This goal makes this book a useful guidebook for a leader to be a better mentor.

The book is about seven questions, which a leader can ask to be a more effective coach. These questions are:

  1. Whats on your mind?
    • It is a question that says, ‘let’s talk about the thing that matters most., it is a kick-start question.
  2. And What Else?
    • You create more opportunity to create more insight on the topic.
  3. What is the real challenge here for you?
    • This makes you pay attention to the things that immediately need scrutiny.
  4. What do you want?
    • Is the listener aligned to coachee? This helps bring the trust between coach and coachee.
  5. What was most useful for you?
    • People don’t learn while seeing or doing things, but rather when they recall and reflect on something
  6. If You Are Saying ‘Yes’ To This, What Are You Saying No to?
    • It’s a strategic question. It asks people to be clear and committed.
  7. How Can I Help?
    • It’s a lazy question, this is a clear and direct question.

Each question, is an open-ended question, few are enticing to give an alternate to the proposed solution, few are challenging one to explore further, few are helping in finding the other side of the story.

Each question is powerful, but they need additional information to be more effective. Based on situation, requires, these questions can be tweaked and sequence can be changed, or a few questions out of seven can be asked.

Our job as manager/ leader is to help create the space for people to have those learning moments. And to achieve that, we need to ask questions which will make them die deeper to find solution and learn in the process.

Get this #goodreads as one tool in your toolbox. And following mind map for more insights.

Quick Book Summary

Join my reading challenge Sumit’s 2023 reading challenge | Goodreads

Book Review : Stolen Focus

GoodRead,

“You don’t get what you don’t fight for.”

Stolen Focus

We all struggle with our focus, whether we know it or not. How long it takes us to disconnect from the world and have a thought without distraction? How many times do we glance at our mobile devices and observe its pinging or illumination? Do we experience fatigue from inactivity?

The current environment we find ourselves in encourages us to achieve our goals by being busy in constantly looking around for information. Starting with notification on laptop/workstation/mobile. All of them try to get our attention, whether it is work-related or social. These services are incentivised to keep our gaze on them continuously. This happens with applications on our mobiles, laptops, or even TV and printed media. The content is meant to make us check them again to get that dopamine satisfaction.

“Stolen Focus” a book by Johann Hari that explores the causes and solutions of our attention crisis. It is based on his three-year journey across the world to interview the leading scientists and experts on this topic. He argues that our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces, and that we can get it back if we fight for it!

The book talks about forces, which are stealing our focus. Few of them are:

  • The rise of consumerism and advertising : mass production and mass consumption created a new culture of distraction and dissatisfaction. Advertisers learned how to manipulate our desires and emotions, and make us crave more and more things that we don’t really need or want.
  • The fragmentation of our work and leisure : Our work environments have become more stressful, demanding, and interruptive, with constant emails, meetings, and deadlines. Our leisure time has also become more fragmented, with endless entertainment options competing for our attention.
  • The design of social media and smartphones : Technologies are deliberately engineered to hijack our attention and make us addicted to them. They exploit our psychological vulnerabilities, such as our need for social approval, our fear of missing out, and our curiosity for novelty.

This book has provided me with an understanding of how the focus is being diverted, given the limited time available, and the importance of identifying how resources are being wasted or invested. The book provides additional insights into not only problems or reasons to lose focus, but also helpful tips to avoid them. The more I explored the book, the deeper I went and got a deeper understanding of this subject.

Definitely a good read, and highly recommended. Checkout summary below in my mind map.

Join my reading challenge Sumit’s 2023 reading challenge | Goodreads

Book Review: Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric

GoodRead,

“Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric” is a book written by Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann. It provides a detailed account of the decline and downfall of one of America’s most iconic companies, General Electric (GE). The book explores the internal culture, leadership decisions, and strategic missteps that led to GE’s dramatic decline and loss of its once-stellar reputation. It sheds light on the hubris, excessive risk-taking, and financial mismanagement that ultimately brought the company to its knees. Through extensive research and interviews, the authors paint a compelling picture of the unravelling of a corporate giant and offer insights into the lessons that can be learned from GE’s collapse.

Winning was my one if the first book when I started reading leadership and management book. Jack Weltch’s unapologetic style of “winning at all cost” and building “winning team” by yanking 10% underperformers each year.

The book got me on “the other side of the coin”. The approach fostered a cut-throat and high-stress work environment, leading to short-term thinking and a lack of focus on long-term growth and innovation. Additionally, this strategy led to a loss of valuable talent and demoralized the workforce. Welch’s heavy reliance on financial metrics has also been viewed as prioritizing shareholder value over other important aspects of the business, such as employee development, customer satisfaction, and long-term sustainability.

The book starts with “winning” by Jack Welch and its heavy focus is post 2001 era, which was led by Jeff Immelt. One can see how the big company like GE struggled with the 2001 slow down, impacted by moving focus from organic fuels to green energy, and how it was struggling with red tapes and decisions of few at the top.

The book also provides insight on corporate governance and the importance and role of Directors in shaping and safeguarding the company. An insightful book written to get almost all the aspects of how (not) to manage the big company and insights on how (not) to catch up with upcoming trends and be wary of fads.

Each chapter could be a case study, on how management takes decisions based on external stimuli and how things might go wrong or become a success. Many insights and definitely a good read for my fellow friends!

Find below MindMap to get more insights.

Coaching and Mentoring… Thought and a Goodread

GoodRead, Productivity

Many a time we use this word quite interchangeably; however, a practitioner knows the Subtle difference between coaching and mentoring.

Mentoring is more personal, it’s one looking into the long future, focusing on improving one from a long-term perspective. A Mentor needs not to be a subject-matter expert, he needs life experience, which he will be sharing with us, and helping us with those life challenges. He for sure needs to share the same interests as the mentee, to be able to connect with the mentee and guide him for his success.

Coaching, on the other hand, is short term, focused on an immediate goal, highly domain oriented and the coach is a professional who helps coachee to identify the goal, and way to achieve it. A coach helps coachee to identify goals, develop plans to achieve them and helps them mitigate the risk with their domain knowledge.

Typically, a business needs more coaching at the operation level, and Mentoring at the management level. No rule, but an experience. I see myself using coaching as a constant tool to help make my team more effective and make them deliver the result, to boost their moral but also help them align to achieve long – term professional goals.

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

This book is really a compact and focused book toward making a more effective coach. It’s basically a focus on asking effective questions.

These powerful questions not only help get more insights on the problem which coaches want (or May want to, as he may not be clear what he wants), but it also helps him to explore more, be more aware of various opportunities to meet the expectations. Wonderful book, highly recommended read.

  1. The AWE Question >And What Else?
  2. The Focus Question > What’s the real challenge here for you?
  3. The Foundation Question > What Do You Want?
  4. The Lazy Question > How Can I Help?
  5. The Strategic Question >If You’re Saying Yes to This, What Are You Saying No To?
  6. The Learning Question >What Was Most Useful for You?
Book Summary

Book Review : Catalyst: The Ultimate Strategies on How to Win at Work 

GoodRead, ,

Do we learn from our experience? What differentiates an experience with a learning experience? How to ensure we learn from experience and be aware of experience as it’s happening and use it to build the knowledge base? That’s this book is all about “Catalyst”

Really a #GoodRead , Catalyst by Chandramouli.
The author, who has a 30+ year track record in Indian industry across sectors, shares his insights and experiences on how to leverage various catalysts that can accelerate your growth and performance. Some of the catalysts he discusses are: learning opportunities, experience algorithm, good bosses and mentors, first half and second half of career, and knowing when to quit. The book is written in an engaging and easy-to-follow style, with real-life examples and anecdotes.

What makes up experience different than learning? The TMRR model!

This book explains how to convert your time and activity into experience by using the TMRR model, which stands for Target, Measure, Review and Reflect.

So we have so many experiences thru out life, but how many times we learn out of it? Example we are part of so many cross functional teams, lead or part of so many projects, how much we learn apart from learning from “burning fingers”.

This TMRR model is one way to deliberately capture those learning from routine experiences.

The book also emphasizes the importance of learning opportunities, which are situations that challenge you and help you grow. It suggests that you should seek out learning opportunities, such as new projects, roles, assignments or geographies, and use the TMRR model to maximize your learning from them

Compact book full of real examples and guiding on how to navigate those challenges.

Some highlights during my book reading

that project leadership is different from thought leadership. As mentioned, major learning cycles more often than not also happen to be important initiatives and projects for organizations

How much experience you extract out of the learning cycle will be driven by how well you applied the TMRR process on the learning cycle!

“Converting time into experience is the very bedrock of real individual growth. An effective TMRR model is the key to converting the time you are spending at work into an experience algorithm that will drive your success in the future”

“Applying the TMRR algorithm on major learning cycles is an exponential way to drive real individual growth.”

“Just building the experience algorithm is not enough. You have to parallelly grow your productivity. Productivity is the means through which you can convert the experience algorithm into results. The key to growing productivity is to focus on the circle of influence and to make sure you allocate your time to the rocks and not the sand”

Day One! Amazing Philosophy of Amazon

GoodRead
blue printer paper
Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com

Recently completed reading a #goodread “Amazon Unbound”, a book written by Brad Stone that chronicles Amazon’s journey from its inception until now. The book details how Jeff Bezos studied market trends and innovation while focusing on long-term strategies. It helps us uncover the secret of Amazon’s vitality and understand Bezos’ thought processes.

Day One is one of the most prominent philosophy, that Bezos drive till date, in-fact their head quarter is called Day-One! Its a principle, which like to keep organization dynamic, keeping the same anxiety as day one of launching the stat-up, make everyone super agile to face the challeges, which will be coming during day one on launch.

Any day in a business needs to be treated as Day 1, same excitement and same preparation to face any challenges out of Day1 execution.

Be dynamic, don’t take things for granted, and always look for new experience and learning in the process. Bezos insist to have a start-up mentality. Never get used to uncertainty, never undermine by red tapes, and always work toward end game.

Some examples of use of this principle by Bezos really gives its insight and application. When face a new challenge in existing project e.g Alexa project or Amazon India, they treated these initiatives like a Day-1, Focus on results and not process.

For example, assistance like Siri and Google, who are having huge data from users, for many years, Amazon could develop Alexa withing three years ground up, and which is now performing better than its competitors. Also, Amazon was late entrant in India, and wanted to buy FlipKart to enter in India, however the deal could not go through, rather limiting themselves, they launched the website in six months, and the whole team was working to make it better by each passing day. Such agility in one of the largest corporate in the world, is amazing.

Rather than taking long in aiming and shooting, he want people to keep on shooting and improve the aiming, which then will become consistent by following this regularly!

“The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind”—Jeff Bezos

The Code Breaker – Book Review

GoodRead

“The discoveries are what endure. We are just passing on this planet for a short time. We do our job, and then we leave, and others pick up the work.” – Emmanuelle Charpentier, co-creator with Doudna

The code breaker another #goodreads from Walter Isaacson, its a Biography of Jennifer Doudna, but reading the book, its also a biography of most powerful gene editing tool CRISPR. Typically to develop a vaccine, it takes somewhere between 8-10 years, however during COVID years, we could get effective vaccine within 8-10 months. Thanks to collaboration across board, but as well as due to availability of gene editing tool CRISPR, which helped build RNA based vaccine. The book traces the history and science of genetic editing, from Darwin to COVID-19.

As they say, with power comes responsibility, the gene editing tool can also modify human DNA permanently, leading to change in germline. i.e. we can make custom babies, have smart solders etc, which is off-course one of the few ethical dilemma discussed in this book.
Got wonderful insights on the journey of getting to this power full tools, as well as advantage of such tools, not only limited to vaccines, but also tools against Cancer, Sickle Cell syndrome etc..
Scientific community are aware of the power of such tools, which can be very well misused by governments, organization and capitalist, nevertheless rather banning the research all together, they like to bring safe-guards as well, which is right approach.
One more insight, people with very less know-how can edit genes in their back yard garage, and one can buy all the needed instruments and equipment to edit gene freely on Amazon! in fact few of such enthusiast developed their own COVID vaccines and tested on their own. (Democratizing gene editing using DIY tools!)

What will happen if this tool becomes available to all? it will be a tip toe effect, suppose you are standing last in a crowded room, and to have a good view, you raise your toe, and stand on tips of the toe, helping you get better view. Now imagine, everyone also stands on tip toe, all are risen by 1~2″, making difficult for all to see the what’s happening, except guys standing in first row (elite)

With some fair reasoning behind how CRISPR can change our lives vs how if not controlled, will lead to a dystopian society.

Highly recommending this book to know the history, present and possible insights in the future.

Some References and good reads –

The LEGO Story

GoodRead, ,
The LEGO Story

What I learned new about LEGO

⁃ Danish company

⁃ Started in 1930s

⁃ It started with wood furniture business

⁃ Ole Kirk took the decision to make simple toys for kids

⁃ Cars, YoYo become its key product

First Price list!

⁃ Largely driven by family values and under influence of Word war 1 and 2

⁃ Very early on tried to involve girls as one of the end consumers, but till date, its products are mostly used by boys.

Early on always questioning use of arms in toys, nevertheless the fist famous product was a wooden toy gun with moving items, portraits as “peace pistol” with ammunition!

⁃ Founder always took risk, gone for more investments in new technologies.

⁃ Founder also went to exhibitions and tried to get more insights on trends, helped him to “copy” LEGO idea.

⁃ Also worked with education community, to press use of toys for intellectual development rather than using it just as a toy. This helped LEGO long term

⁃ Second generation, founder early on got insight to decide which sibling will be taking lead post him.

⁃ Conflict between generation gaps are nicely put forward by second generation (Godtfred k and Kjed K, both mentioned their struggles with their father, unlike Goftfred 2nd generation, it’s more with Kjed, 3rd generation)

⁃ 3rd Generation decided to bring more new management, younger and western philosophy.

⁃ Nicely told story about the cultural shift in the management style, also inclusivity of women in upper management.

Key insights

  • Focus on technology and keep key theme intact during growth.
  • Diversification not only on portfolio but also on approach (physical toys to movies and theme parks)
  • How to ensure the family inheritance to continue and ensure success of LEGO, creation of “LEGO Idea Paper”, set of guidelines helping future generations to get clear vision.
  • LEGO is not the first in “self locking block”, it was Kiddicraft’s self locking block.
  • LEGO’s change in focus from toys to system. Rather creating individual toys, LEGO brought a “system” of creating anything out of blocks.
  • LEGO’s translation from “make anything from blocks” to product which are now coming with “manual” to create complex toys.
  • In 1958, the modern LEGO brick was patented, featuring tubes and studs.

LEGO, then and now!

Cars was one of the first famous toys from LEGO
The Peace Pistol!
Girls are missing LEGO
LEGO Patent

#GoodRead 10% Happier

GoodRead,

10% Happier toes the line between being a memoir and self-help book. It focuses on self-help theories at different times within the book, but is less preachy in the way it uses knowledge gleaned from the author’s real-life experiences. The author uses his own personal story as an avenue for exploring religion, mindfulness, and meditation.

Quick Review

Book balance between humour and life lessons, and journey of one to embrace meditation as a lifelong practice

It’s interesting to see, his transformation from a sceptic to follower of a meditation practice. It’s also intriguing to see the challenge which he has faced, are so much same that I can relate to myself. And I think this is also applicable to others. The book is not about “ifs and buts” , it’s about what is it feel like to recognise the inner chatter, calm it down a bit and focus on now.

10 commandments, so to say, is real summary of why and what about meditation. Let me put this for you.

1. Don’t be a jerk

we feel, success needs competition, and it’s opposite to compassion. However, success is possible with compassion only.

2. Hide Zen

Sometimes you need to compete aggressively, plead your own case, or even have a sharp word with someone. It’s not easy, but it’s possible to do this calmly and without making the whole thing overly personal.

3. Meditate

Difficult, but do it 10-15 minute daily. It’s all about acknowledging without any judgement. Let environment tease you, you notice and acknowledge them, and keep breathing.

4. The Price of Security Is Insecurity—Until It’s Not Useful

Okie to have constructive anguish. There’s no point in being unhappy about things you can’t change, and no point being unhappy about things you can

5. Equanimity Is Not the Enemy of Creativity

Mindfulness make us more creative, it tames the mind, to make space for more useful thoughts.

6. Don’t Force It

Embrace ambiguity, take purposeful pause

7. Humility Prevents Humiliation

Put ego aside. Humility helps sanders the edges of ego. Make us more compassionate and approachable.

8. Go Easy with the Internal Cattle Prod

Don’t over do “self criticism”. Listen but don’t accept the inner chatter without a deliberate pause.

9. Nonattachment to Results

Nonattachment to results + self compassion = a supple relentlessness that is hard to match.

10. What Matters Most?

And that’s what we should able to answer. This is “what matter most” to feel anguish about any situation, where you want to react. Pause and ask

Summary in short

Book Review : Four Thousand Weeks

GoodRead, ,

Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved “work-life balance”! That’s a powerful statement and validation of a feeling which I was carrying for many decades. I myself giving productivity seminars and coaching people to be productive and get the “work life balance”. Actually, I stopped suggesting people on “work life balance” long time, and was asking for “work life fit” , and I suppose that’s the crack in my belief in Getting Things Done.

Very recently I celebrated my 42nd Birthday, and one of my well wisher has sent me this. 🧐

And I came across this book, 4000 weeks! I lived 2200 weeks approx, and 4000 weeks is what typically a person leave at the age of 80! I just crossed my half life, And luckily this book got me into great revelation.

Master Your Time, Master Your Life

Brian Tracy (Time Management Guru)

This is what I believed, and striving so far to “manage the time”, This dream of somehow one day getting the upper hand in our relationship with time is the most forgivable of human delusions because this book made me understand the alternative, and it is so unsettling.

unfortunately, it’s the alternative that’s true: the struggle is doomed to fail. Because your quantity of time is so limited, you’ll never reach the commanding position of being able to handle every demand that might be thrown at you or pursue every ambition that feels important; you’ll be obliged to make tough choices instead. And because you can’t dictate, or even accurately predict, so much of what happens with the finite portion of time you do get, you’ll never feel that you’re securely in charge of events, immune from suffering, primed and ready for whatever comes down the pike… and that’s the “enlightening moment for me from this book”

Let’s talk about the book

By Oliver Burkeman,

lovely and short book on making us understand the concept of Finitude. The finite amount of time we have, and rather than spending this finite amount of time in struggling to manage it, how to be more effective by being in present and utilising it.

Key Take Aways

Patience become a form of power
In a world geared for hurry, the capacity to resist the urge to hurry—to allow things to take the time they take—is a way to gain purchase on the world, to do the work that counts, and to derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of deferring all your fulfillment to the future.

Hobbies have acquired this embarrassing reputation in an era so committed to using time instrumentally.
I’m also guilty of this feeling. Sometime hobbies become kind of mandate, pushing me to consume me time under hobby to help me be more productive. Hobbies on other hand should help me relax not make me more busy. Kind a oxymoron.

Be in present.
You’re so fixated on trying to make the best use of your time—in this case not for some later outcome, but for an enriching experience of life right now—that it obscures the experience itself. A more fruitful approach to the challenge of living more fully in the moment starts from noticing that you are, in fact, always already living in the moment anyway, whether you like it or not.

basic mistake—of treating our time as something to hoard, when it’s better approached as something to share.

What would it mean to spend the only time you ever get in a way that truly feels as though you are making it count? It’s never late to find yourself doubting the point of what you’re doing with your life, because it demonstrates that an inner shift has already occurred. we are no more preoccupied with the thoughts, ignoring the facts.

The real truth. that what you do with your life doesn’t matter all that much—and when it comes to how you’re using your finite time, the universe absolutely could not care less.

My mindmap

Book summary