Being a leader

Being a leader means doing 5 things-

1. Have a big aspiration

2. Lead from the front and problem solve

3. Build relationships

4. Have intellectual restlessness to renew and innovate

5. Have resilience - keep standing on the inside

If your dreams don't scare you, they are not big enough!

Life as a portfolio of goals

We all choose to live life differently. My philosophy is to live life as portfolio of goals. What that means is that one should think about some near term goals and some far term goals, and one should increasingly think about new and different things as the timeline for the goals increases. This has several advantages.

1. It allows us to gain a sense of achievement by accomplishing things in the short term. This is possible since by definition, the near term goals are in areas we are familiar with. For example - a mountain climber setting goals of climbing increasing challenging peaks. A sales agent setting increasing sales targets.

2. It allows us to believe there is ever changing diversity in our lives, which gives us a sense of hope and a direction to look forward to. It is said that till there is hope, there is life. Longer terms goals allow us to believe in this hope.

3. It allows us to renew ourselves. As I mentioned, the goals further out should be in areas less familiar to us. A sense of renewal, a sense of growth is important to our evolutionary senses. Growing out into new areas also allows us to build a broader network of people, which in turn increases our happiness quotient.

How can one start to think about this portfolio of goals?

Start with where you are. Lay out a couple of areas you are spending a lot of you current time (professional, personal), and lay out 2-3 year goals for yourself. This is your near term portfolio.

Next, think of 3-5 new things you've always wanted to learn or do. Again, these can be professional or personal, ideally both. Some can be related to your current portfolio, but some should be truly new, new things. Ofcourse, consider your skills and abilities as you do this, but remember, more often than not, limits exist in the mind!

Now that you have these 3-5 new things, arrange them in order of complexity, with the least complex closer out, and the most complex thing furthest out.

Determine a way for you to balance how you spend you time between your existing portfolio and your future portfolio. As a rule of thumb, try not to spend more than 80% of your time on your existing portfolio. This is very important so that your portfolio of goals can we progressively achieved and is not something that just remains on paper.

Finally, remember that this portfolio should be updated every 1-2 years (not any more frequent as it can be disruptive and lead to loss of focus).

Life Function

People are unusually programmable.

My work across many companies has convinced me that while we all are born with a free will and some sort of a conscience, we don't always grow up to tap this phenomenal gift.

For example, when companies want to achieve certain objectives, they just have to make sure that the incentive structure is so aligned as to ensure everyone is working towards a common goal. This thought is simple and probably enabling. However, in most cases, metrics are designed in a siloed way so as to maximize local interests without attention to the overall business cause. The examples are numerous - indeed, one has to only spend a day in any company/institution to gain several examples of this. The dealership where the agent is out to sell you the full set of accessories, the restaurant waiter who's quick to recommend the wine and slow to offer advice around what to avoid, the inventory planning groups that are quick to over procure, the enterprise sales teams that are quick to offer unsustainable discounts, etc.. The list is long and prevalent in our everyday lives.

Life Function

I believe the root cause of this is an inherent desire in each of us to maximize our "Life Function". Its inputs are many (food, money, state of relationships, state of people close to us, risks etc). In animals, we call it the "survival instinct". In humans, I think it goes well beyond the instinct to survive (though that is of course a core element). It expands to pleasure, happiness, ambition and perhaps even a little part of charity. People are always trying to increase the output of their Life Function. I suppose its similar to the the world's entropy in some sense. The easiest way to do that is to stay close to what one has been aligned against in terms of performance metrics. Hence the short term attention to one's local ecosystem vs. the broader view of the full ecosystem.

We are unusually "programmable". Unlike many physical phenomena, which take months to years to centuries to change, people have incredibly little change inertia. If we stand to increase our Life Function, we will usually not hesitate to change ourselves immediately. Given the presence of free will and conscience, its clear to me that our mind has a weight/value associated with all things human, and the "self" is greater than the truth.

The implications of what I have just stated are possibly startling, possibly saddening. But that's life, or should I say, the Life Function. But there are examples of people who's Life Function has arguably got modified. The process of how this happens is not clear to me. But the results are. There are many examples of "selfless" acts in our lives. There are many acts of valor. There are many people who have made sacrifices, often times for people they don't even know. Therefore it would seem to be that while we are unusually programmable, there are clearly events in our lives that can alter the otherwise predicable behavior of most people.

Looking up, looking ahead

Think of last 3-5 instances when you had to make conscious choices. Ask yourself what your rationale was. Those that ponder little will believe it to be, "what was good for me or my family/friends". Those that think a little more will likely come back with realization that their actions were trying to maximize a complex desire called Life Function.

Find out what the constants and variables are in your Life Function. Then ask yourselves what you would like it to be. The first step towards change is to know where you are and where you want to go. Good luck.

Self-discovery

"Running is the classical road to self-consciousness, self-awareness and self-reliance. Independence is the outstanding characteristic of the runner. He learns the harsh reality of his physical and mental limitations when he runs. He learns that personal commitment, sacrifice and determination are his only means to betterment. Runners only get promoted through self-conquest."
Noel Carroll, Irish track trailblazer

Self discovery is not the passage of time. We learn by knowing standing on boundary conditions. Boundary conditions are experiences we have not been exposed to before which tend to trigger somewhat instinctive reactions from us. We may choose not to follow our instinct, but the instinct is present.

I marvel at self discovery. We sometimes surprise ourselves at who we are. Sometimes we're proud, and sometimes we realize we're just like everyone else. Regardless, we get a little closer to who we really are, and not who we would like to be.

Long distance running is one such boundary condition. When you have to run consistently for months to prepare for a marathon, it makes you see how you respond to long periods of making tradeoffs around running. Some people stop, others keep going. There is no right answer. But there is self-discovery. Thats key.

May we all discover ourselves!

Courage

Of all the many qualities we all possess in varying degrees, I admire 2 the most. The first is honesty, and the second is courage. This is about courage.

What is courage?
I used to think that courage only meant not being afraid. Years of watching movies and interacting with people led me to believe that to be courageous meant getting into a mindset where the situation ceased to create any fear in one's mind, where one charged ahead and tackled it.

I believe that to still be true, but there is another type of courage that has since emerged in my mind that exists. This form of courage does not imply the absence of fear. In fact, fear is an part of the courage experience. So courage then lies in:
- Recognizing this fear and understanding it
- Laying out a set of actions to address these fears
- Executing against these set of actions, often modifying them when needed

Indeed, fear then becomes nothing but a catalyst towards action where its needed. It's probably a bit of an acquired "taste" in terms of one's response and effectiveness, but is just as effective in the long run. The key here is I believe its leads to a similar set of actions, and draws equal if not more inspiration from those around oneself.

Is courage instinctive or a gained skill? Well, both. As I mentioned above, for some people, courage comes naturally. Its instinctive. For others, courage is not the absence of fear. In that case, through determination and patience, its much more of a gained or acquired skill.

How can one acquire courage?

1. Give yourself time. Its alright to be afraid of something new. Recognize that the process of learning takes time.

2. Seek internal analogies. Think about an incident where you were last confronted with something similar (or not) where you responded in a way that you thought was courageous. Knowing that you have been down a path before helps build courage.

3. Seek external analogies. Look around to seek out role models or examples of others you may or may not know that might have gone through something similar. Sometimes, the most important thing we're really looking for is the end of the tunnel. Learning about such examples helps us know that there's a way out and others have been through it before.

4. Stop thinking and start thinking. Stop thinking about the problem. Start thinking about what you can do to move an inch. Sometimes the most important way to be courageous is to take the first step.

5. Be persistent. Courage comes with trying and not giving up.

Being a leader

Over the last 3-4 years, I've thought hard about what it means to be a leader. Its not an easy question when you're someone who like to put structure around any concept and hence like to disaggregate concepts. Some of the questions I've been thinking about are,

• We know what effective people do right (7 Habits of Highly Effective People), but what are more fundamental intrinsics of leaders?
• Are their different types of leaders, or are leaders just leading different things?
  
• There's a "trust equation" (The Trusted Adviser); is their a leadership equation?
• What kind of a leader do I want to be?
  

I'm far from figuring these questions out, but I'm happy to note that I'm making progress. My work allows me to see a lot of effective people in leadership roles. By stepping aside and observing them more thoughtfully, I've been able to start putting some thoughts together.

Here are some emerging hypotheses from observations,

1. Leaders are bold and embrace risk. They may not always welcome it.
   
2. Leaders don't seem to think too much about failure.
   
3. Leaders know they can't do it all themselves. A good leader builds a good team.
4. Leaders drive towards milestones, not finish lines.
5. Leaders have a clear sense of priorities, and practice that judgment every day.
   
6. Leaders often seem to have time to do urgent & important things, but also seem to have time for their family and atleast one other personal passion.
   

Food for thought I think.

Mountains

I have many favorite mountains. I like some for their natural beauty. Some for the stories that reside among their lofty heights. And some because they are unique in some special way.

Perhaps the mountain I think about the most is Nanda Devi. Thats because its in the area of India from where I am. But that aside, its truly a beautiful mountain. Its quite unsymmetrical with each face having a unique identity.

(picture courtesy www.euttaranchal.com)

I first saw Nanda Devi many many years ago while traveling to Almora with my family. I was possibly 8 years old at the time. I recall seeing it from Kasaedevi. At the time the mountain seemed like a pretty spectacle, but that was about it.

It wasn't till the late 1980s or even the early 1990s when I actually took real notice of the lovely mountain. My interest in the mountain took a sharp and deep turn because of two distinct data sources. I got a hold of two books that gave me tremendous insights about the mountain. The first was a story about the first ascent of Nanda Devi by Shipton and Tillman, the legendary climbing partners. The second was a story about a more recent and tragic ascent of Nanda Devi by an American climbing party. That book was authored by John Roskelley.

Ever since, I have made it a point to picture the mountain in as much detail as I could each time I was in Kumaon. Its been tough. The elusive mountain is not easy to photograph as clouds often surround the high peak. The closest I ever got to Nanda Devi was on a trip to Munsiyari. My purpose was to get close and photograph the mountain. Unfortunately, as we got close to a high pass to take pictures, clouds came in and blocked our views.

It seems the mountain and I will continue to play hide-n-seek and our little affair will continue...