Regenerate!

You must be coming across this phrase often, particularly if you are a business leader who tries to keep in touch with the current research and thinking in the fields of leadership and management. There is always some new thinking. You read an article, attend a leacture and pick up new thoughts. But before you have had any time to apply this to your business, you are either neck deep in your urgent business matters or there is a newer idea.

And then whatever happens to ‘old’ ideas and concepts? Does something gets useless just because it is ‘outdated’? Consider these, for example:

Core competence

Blue Ocean \ Red Ocean Strategy

Disruptive innovation

Six Sigma \ Lean Sigma for process improvements

360 degrees appraisal

Values based leadership

One can list many such concepts which were ‘in’ once upon a time.  But these concepts still present useful perspectives  if applied to specific situations. An intelligent leader can exploit these to check if any new insights and strategy points can be obtained by using these.

Learning Leadership programs and agenda generating workouts incorporate powerful principles behind various frameworks and ‘theories’ and give an opportunity to the leader to apply them to specific situations. Learning Leadership’s executive coaches assit the leaders in this.

Leaders sharpen their thinking and develop their agenda using the above and many more powerful principles throgh carefully designed executive coaching programs.

More and more senior corporate executives are undergoing Learning Leadership programs. Every program involves a set of well structured workouts.

A senior executive said that “The workouts seemed to be simple at first. But as I started putting down my answers, I realized that I need to think more. They turned out to be more difficult than I thought.”

That is true. Most executives say that. The Learning Leadership workouts seem to be simple because they avoid jargon and the questions are straightforward. But the questions also make one think about fundamental aspects of the way one interacts, deals with values and feelings, handles work processes, and many more aspects of work & life.

By doing workouts one ’sees’ and ‘examines’ what one has thought. This makes one think deeper. That’s why the workouts seem difficult.

The Learning Leadership’s executive coach can also ’see’ and ‘examine’ one’s thinking. The coach can then ask more questions or suggest different approaches to thinking. This is really invaluable but requires further efforts.

There is one more reason why the seemingly easy workouts turn out to be difficult -one is required to come up specific action items (own agenda) to deal with the situations captured in the workouts. Change is possible only through actions. Bringing about change is leadership, is it not? Learning Leadership is not easy, but it is worthwhile.

Your executive coach is there to see you through.

Sign up now if you haven’t done it yet and see for yourself the how much you learn and directly use it when you lead.

Learning Leadership skills or improving them requires important changes in the ‘wiring’ of our brains. Thinking like walking style  is driven by habits formed.

Some of the important changes required in thinking of leaders are:

-capturing reality comprehensively and  while avoiding various biases and pre-conceived notions. By habit we take a very narrow and biased view.

-zero based thinking or thinking based on first principles. But we find it easier start with some ‘known’ base and come to conclusions fast.

-developing clarity and conviction about values. We are in agreement with values in general but we are used to applying them real situations.

-being in touch with own and others feelings and generating energy from them. Our education (most of it) is heavily biased towards left brain thinking. Our right brains need to be wired in!

-ability to dream big

-communicate and communicate. We always underestimate this need.

-bias for action.

These thinking habits can be formed by ‘thinking’ in above ways in relation to own work.

Miskin sent me an intersting article on unlearning & learning

This article says that generally unlearning (not really unlearning) happens through non-use and for this new thinking habits need to be formed and practiced. Very relevant.

Learning Leadership programs and coaching help learners in all this. Coaching is particularly useful since only a neutral and knowledgeable person can help one with observing and correcting thinking habits.

Take a look.

Many thanks Miskin for a nice article.

As I get some time to breath, sitting in a client’s office in Chennai, I see.

Coming out of Channai airport and getting on the arterial road to city, I see with a mixture of pleasure and a bit of jealousy, pedestrians crossing the road with a brisk but not a frantic walk. Of course there are two policemen on either side of the road divider who help this happen. I dream of pleasures of walking in amche Pune.

I see people developing technologies and business models for  providing banking, shopping, and travel services as and when needed. I dream of me not having to repeat my preferences every time I need to bank or travel or buy something . I see that I do not have to negotiate road traffic and aisle traffic in malls and the humanoids there if I choose not to. I see that I do not have to remember to do a web check-in at midnight just to book an aisle seat. Choosing and buying gifts does not have to be such a huge decision making and nerve wrecking exercise. I see around me, hapy people while shopping. That makes me happier too.

In between my work at the client’s place I get some time. I log into our Learning Leadership to coach senior industry people remotely. I see that people in their forties, fifties, or sixties building new businesses and transforming existing ones. I see their commitment for developing themselves even after being successful. I see them coming out with their follies and vulnerabilities just so that they can think better, dream bigger, decide better, and act with purpose. These business leaders are willing to be challenged about their thoughts and they are willing to be corrected. I feel their passion for learning. I feel the energy that their dreams play out.

I see short cuts taken and corners being cut for pennies and careers and lives being sacrificed for some fortune. But also I see people committing themselves to what may come to fruition years later. There are smug people and there are some who  criticize but do not devote their talents for creating. But there are people who dream and create.

I get frustrated with the walls of vested interests that hoodwink us with dubious economics and science - whether for cutting carbon or for Bt Brinjal or for promoting automobile industry or for promoting nuclear energy. But I also see  ethical hackers, RTI activists, and profesionals with heart  -gamely breaching the walls that keep coming up.

I hear about very young people driven to desperation and I see some of them getting too wise and too practical. But I also see young people with gleam in their eyes about their game changing efforts. I see them setting aside limitations of education and asking ‘why not’ to challenges.

I dream too. Dreams, mine & others, make life lively.

As always, change is in the air, I want be part of it.