QAspire

NOVEMBER 20, 2011

Ability to deal with rapid changes and uncertainties on the field is as critical a skill for organizations/teams as it is for the military troops. In military operations, lack of agility can have more serious and rapid consequences. In case of teams, individuals and organizations, the consequences may not be visible in a short term, [.

Team 164

Team Short-term Agility Uncertainty 164

QAspire

MARCH 6, 2011

The true test of a leader is when things don’t go as planned. Worst yet, when things fail. In an organizational context, I have seen so many leaders who drive the project/initiative right from the beginning – yet when the project fails, they blame others. The blame senior management, the organization culture, their own team members and sometimes even the customers.

Bottom-up 164

Bottom-up Reputation Project Team 164

QAspire

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

Quality is Human. When leaders rely too much on processes, metrics, facts and trends to measure project/organization’s quality, they forget one thing: that quality is about being human. Quality is human. That is because people drive quality and exercise their choice of delivering good versus great work. Because work allows people to expand their capacity to deliver.

Quality 164

Quality Metrics Trends Project 164

QAspire

MARCH 16, 2011

In organizations, I have seen people who are “designated” as leaders. I have seen many such designated leaders, who raised their game to meet the expectations that come along with leadership. They make an effort to learn about leadership, read books, blogs and consciously put those lessons in action. On the other hand, I have also seen designated leaders who create a shield of air around themselves.

Charisma 163

Charisma Leadership Report Blog 163

QAspire

NOVEMBER 6, 2011

… For Managers. In knowledge world, productivity is hard to quantify. If you try to adopt old “command and control” style of management to drive knowledge workers, they get even less productive. Don’t command, empower. Don’t control, but lead them instead. Understand that knowledge workers cannot always be productive between 9 to 5. They have their creative zones and routines when they are most productive.

Productivity 162

Productivity Products Webinar Drucker 162

QAspire

JANUARY 16, 2011

Home Go to QAspire.com Guest Posts Disclaimer Gandhi, Leadership And A Few Lessons On Simplicity I have been a great admirer of Mahatma Gandhi - one of the greatest leaders India has ever produced. I recently visited Sabarmati Ashram , one of the residences of Gandhi, where we got a glimpse into Gandhi’s life as a national leader. One thing that really struck me was the simplicity of his life and his messages (like the one below): Photo by Tanmay Vora at Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad Gandhi was a

Leadership 160

Leadership Directory Blog Quality 160

QAspire

JULY 26, 2011

Managing effectively is not just one skill, but a mix of different skills. It is a combination of different kinds of intelligence we have as human beings, which makes it an art and a craft. Have you seen a manager who is highly skilled in technical areas but lacks empathy for others? Or the one [.

Skills 159

Skills Management 159

QAspire

JANUARY 9, 2011

Home Go to QAspire.com Guest Posts Disclaimer 5 Key Lessons From Learning Organizations Problems, challenges and inefficiencies (in one way or the other) are a part of any organization. How organizations deal with them makes all the difference. In my career so far, I have (broadly) seen two kinds of organizations. First are the ones who know the problem areas, but are not willing to invest in having the necessary structure to prevent them in future.

Learning Organization 160

Learning Organization Organization Senge Blog 160

QAspire

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

When we work as an individual contributor in early years of our careers, we are in-charge of our own outcomes. At some point, we get promoted to a leadership position, and we have to get things done through people. This is one of the most significant transitions in our careers, and the one that is [.

Review 157

Review Books Career Positioning 157

QAspire

JULY 15, 2011

We live in a time when our career is not just a sum total of years we spent in the industry. Our career is about what projects we initiated/handled/led and what difference did the project deliver. Project is a new eco-system, a new playground where we play and thrive as professionals to deliver our best. [.

Godin 156

Godin Project Leadership Career 156

QAspire

MARCH 9, 2011

We live in times where more and more work is executed by teams that are geographically distributed. Leading a virtual team, fostering collaboration and binding them to common set of objectives is one of the key challenges for business leaders. In most of the troubled projects I have seen, the real challenges were not technical/engineering ones but communication/collaboration ones.

Team 156

Team Project System Engineering 156

QAspire

MARCH 2, 2011

People deliver their best work when they are fully engaged with the purpose of their work. In an organizational setting, people only deliver their best when they are engaged with the purpose, vision and values of the organization they work with. They look at their work as a part of a larger whole – and not just a discrete component. How do we engage our people?

Resources 155

Resources eBook Storytelling CEO 155

QAspire

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

When we work on large scale projects, long term assignments or complex change initiatives – we decompose our work into smaller chunks that are more manageable. Geeks refer to this technique as “modularization”. We create a set of smaller tasks that we perform according to a schedule to achieve milestones, and hence the objective. It all [.

Long-term 155

Long-term Reference Objective Project 155

QAspire

JUNE 26, 2011

You don’t need to be a Manager/VP/Director of Quality to be a quality leader, because quality leadership is not about title/experience, but more about mindset/attitude. Irrespective of your title, seniority or position in the hierarchy, you are a quality leader when you: 1) Are passionate about your work… 2) …And know how to balance creativity [.

Quality 154

Quality Leadership Creativity Positioning 154

QAspire

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

Rapport building isn’t just something you do when you first meet someone or as a part of a sales call or a negotiation. As leaders (and human beings) one of our goals must be to build better and deeper relationships, and one of the tangible ways we can do that is through an ongoing [.

Goal 153

Goal 153

QAspire

OCTOBER 25, 2011

A novice manager tells people what needs to be done. A wise manager listens, questions and challenges. People are not interested in what you tell them to do (command and control). They are interested in what they control and learn from what they are doing (empowerment). Facilitation helps in both. In getting things done and [.

Management 151

Management 151

QAspire

AUGUST 31, 2011

Quality has moved beyond the simplistic definitions like “conformance to customer requirements”. If quality of your product/service merely meets/conforms to customer requirements, it is not remarkable, but a basic expectation. That is because everyone else has mastered the art of ‘meeting’ customer’s requirements. “Total Quality” is much more than just implementing processes or doing rigorous [.

Quality 151

Quality Definition Process Productivity 151

QAspire

DECEMBER 11, 2011

A retail outlet of a leading shoe brand recently opened up in near vicinity. The design of the store is flashy with impressive interiors and product arrangement. The brand carries a lot of consumer trust since many years. Good store, great brand and competitive prices all at one stop. The only (and probably the biggest) irritant there was attitude of their staff.

Quality 148

Quality Bottom-up Brand Retail 148

QAspire

JANUARY 2, 2011

Home Go to QAspire.com Guest Posts Disclaimer A Worthy Goal for 2011 and Beyond New year brings with it new predictions, agendas, resolutions and trends. New business models, new ways of working, cooler tools and technologies. One thing that remains constant (and has remained constant) is “Excellence” – which is at the core of the success of any organization, product, service or an individual.

Goal 148

Goal Directory Quality Blog 148

QAspire

JANUARY 12, 2011

Home Go to QAspire.com Guest Posts Disclaimer Quality? Excellence? What? I was casually discussing quality and excellence with one of my old friends. We were exchanging our ideas on these topics, when I realized that he used the words quality and excellence interchangeably. This led to some more thinking and here’s what I realized: Quality is generally extrinsic.

Quality 147

Quality Compliance Directory Blog 147

QAspire

NOVEMBER 9, 2011

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is on my reading list and I was curious to have some initial reviews about the book. Matthew E. May recently reviewed the book on his blog. In a post titled “ The Zen Master of Subtraction: Steve Jobs ”, Matt shares some very interesting stories/snippets about how Steve Jobs generated extreme focus by virtue of elimination.

Bottom-up 146

Bottom-up Guidelines Review Blog 146

QAspire

OCTOBER 16, 2011

Group dynamics in a team is a strong force. People on the team are used to work in a certain way. They always encounter/expect some specific/known behaviors from their colleagues. They have a fortified belief system about how things should be done in the team. There is a specific way of communication and often the [.

Diversity 144

Diversity Belief Systems System Team 144

QAspire

FEBRUARY 23, 2011

Two things we know about change: Resistance is our natural reaction to any change that disrupts our current way of working. Things only change when the pain of change is less than the pain of remaining in current state. Ability to foresee, plan and implement change for better alignment to the market and generate better outcomes is a [.

Process 143

Process Management Resistance Marketing 143

QAspire

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

As we grow, our belief system firms up with notions of what is right and what is wrong. What works and what not. At work, our beliefs further solidify according to the context we work in. Understanding of data, facts and trends is important because it make us “rational”. The problem starts however, when we try to be rational all the time. A leader who always takes a rational standpoint fails to inspire people, because people are not always rational.

Belief Systems 142

Belief Systems Godin Trends Follow-up 142

QAspire

APRIL 3, 2011

Drucker got it wrong. Drucker famously wrote that “ the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. ” I’m as much a fan of Drucker’s as any management scholar, but I have to part ways with him here. The purpose of business is NOT to create or to keep a customer. Certainly it is an objective, even THE primary objective of business. If a business can not create or keep customers, then soon there is no business.

Drucker 142

Drucker Objective Entrepreneur Consultative 142

QAspire

MARCH 13, 2011

When leaders undertake process improvement/change initiative, they walk on a tight rope. On one hand, they have to improve the processes to deliver positive business outcomes. On the other, they have to ensure that improvement/change initiative does not slow down the current work and bring the overall efficiencies down. Both are crucial and striking the right balance between improvement and business efficiency, between standardization and evolution is a big leadership challenge.

Efficiency 140

Efficiency Process Resistance Training 140

QAspire

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

A few years back, I was facilitating a team that was responsible for pulling off a project in a completely new technology. This also meant that each one of the team members had to take initiative and explore new areas of the technology. While the project had a designated project lead, we saw many team members [.

Team 140

Team Project Leadership Technology 140

QAspire

MARCH 22, 2011

Last year, Seth Godin showed us a way to become a Linchpin. This year, he urges us to “ Poke the Box ” – to act, to start, to initiate, to experiment, to try (and fail and learn from it) and most importantly to finish and deliver. Poking the box is about taking initiatives, not just waiting for someone to delegate them to us. Seth has packed a lot of punch into this book, so much that the passion and force in his writing almost instigates us to start/act.

Godin 139

Godin Review Delegation Learning-by-Doing 139

QAspire

FEBRUARY 10, 2011

If you are a leader, you will invariably face situations where: People will criticize you for doing something. People will criticize you even for not doing something. Your decisions will go against you. You will face a lot of resistance in your initiatives. Roadblocks will be encountered People will closely analyze your decisions. You may be accused of doing (or not doing) [.

Resistance 139

Resistance 139

QAspire

JANUARY 20, 2011

Home Go to QAspire.com Guest Posts Disclaimer “Value” and “Waste” – Watch Them Constantly “ Delivering Value ” is the buzzword these days. Companies are working ways out to deliver more value, people in organizations are evaluated based on value they create and clients seek “value-adds” in products and services they purchase.

Directory 138

Directory Restructuring Quality Blog 138

QAspire

JULY 6, 2011

Albert Einstein believed that supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible. He said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Here are some very basic (irreducible) questions that can act as powerful checklist to assess your processes. – Why [.

Goal 136

Goal Process Power 136

QAspire

JULY 3, 2011

“Practice makes a man perfect”, they say. Only practice is not enough. In business, have you seen people who have been doing something for a long time and still not very good at it? If practice was enough, these people should have been rock stars in their work, right? But they aren’t. So, what’s missing? [.

136

136

QAspire

AUGUST 1, 2011

Services world revolves around communication. In projects/initiatives, knowledge has to be transferred, issues have to discussed and expectations have to be managed. A lot of young professionals I meet want to improve upon their communication skills. A few of them also think that good communication is all about having a great style, good language, impressive vocabulary and so on.

Energy 135

Energy Project Mentor Advice 135

QAspire

MARCH 27, 2011

Across the web, I have recently read articles/posts that underline an important thing – technology is taking a toll on our productivity and is keeping us from doing work that really matters – that is, if we allow. I have seen both sides of the coin. I often get into a state when my work seemed to be just flowing and I never realized that I was doing the “work”.

Competitive Advantage 135

Competitive Advantage Godin Bottom-up Advertising 135

QAspire

SEPTEMBER 10, 2011

I have been a close observer of team dynamics in a project environment. In last 13 years, I have seen a number of teams that were highly successful, teams that failed initially and then succeeded, teams that succeeded only when there was a fire in the project and teams where success was constant and incremental. [.

Succession 131

Succession Team Project Environment 131

QAspire

FEBRUARY 20, 2011

John F. Kennedy said this (one of my favorite quotes) - “There are risks and costs to a program of actions. But they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”. Comfortable inaction is the state where the immediate implication of not doing something is not visible, but in a longer [.

Cost 130

Cost Leadership 130

QAspire

JANUARY 23, 2011

When we run a business or execute a project, we set clear goals of what we want to achieve, create detailed plans, devise strategies and set up milestones. But leadership, just like life, is ambiguous and paradoxical. People default, conflicts happen, clients change their requirements, demand/supply suddenly flips, things just don’t work as expected, delays [.

Project 130

Project Goal Strategy Planning 130