Review the outcome

During implementation review the outcome. Be aware of the end before you take the first step. Unify your teams by hitching them to the ultimate goal. Top management should inspire and empower the teams to action. A team bonding exercise getting everyone to see a bird’s eye view of the exercise is critical. Review the Resource for every team. Consolidate the reviews if the resources being used are adequate. Study the impact on the expected outcome. Ensure that the process is moving towards the final outcome: reducing costs, increasing revenues, improving customer satisfaction and ensuring greater employee participation.

Review the outcome

During implementation review the outcome. Be aware of the end before you take the first step. Unify your teams by hitching them to the ultimate goal. Top management should inspire and empower the teams to action. A team bonding exercise getting everyone to see a bird’s eye view of the exercise is critical. Review the Resource for every team. Consolidate the reviews if the resources being used are adequate. Study the impact on the expected outcome. Ensure that the process is moving towards the final outcome: reducing costs, increasing revenues, improving customer satisfaction and ensuring greater employee participation.

Suggestions for the facilitator

 Become familiar with what discourages creativity and speculation and what encourages it.  Listen to team members. Encourage, nurture and paint any picture they wish in their own words. Avoid making judgments, tuning out, listening to your own thoughts or not really understanding the speaker. Work on improving listening skills, especially the non-verbal ones.  Be vigilant, and deal with members who try to dominate with immediate and endless details. While they are brilliant, they can ruin a meeting so try to steer them away without alienation. Avoid the compulsive speaker’s eye during the discussion.  Keep the energy level high. Use your alertness, intensity and enthusiasm to improve the field. Your attitude is contagious. Your body language can stimulate the group to greater enthusiasm.  Use visuals, excursions and dynamic movement to avoid slothfulness. Changing the location renews the group especially when people are tired. It is often like an actual vacation from the problem and people return with fresh ideas.  Keep the pace fast, but not hurried.  Use humour, laughter breaks and laughter exercises.  Surprise the group. Have a plan to shake things up for post lunch sessions, or low energy times.  Make sure the problem owner is getting what he wants.  Let everyone learn the demanding role of the facilitator.  Keep an eye on the climate. Be gentle but firm. Be in charge of process. The facilitator is like the conductor of an orchestra. Minute to minute he is responsible for getting the best out of team members in a meeting.

Facilitator and Participants

The facilitator is responsible for managing the group process so that the problem owner gets what they need. The facilitator keeps this in mind and protects group mates while ensuring discipline. • Concerned with process only, never involved in the content • Sets positive climate by: i) accepting all ideas ii) writes down headlines of ideas, and solutions iii) gives everyone a chance to contribute • Elicits the ideas hidden behind a question • Manages the time and pace of the meeting • Ensures the owner’s best current thinking is shared with the group • Ensures that everybody takes notes of what is in their mind Participants are the heart of any meeting. All the skills of the facilitator and the constructive responses of the client are designed to help each participant make his unique contribution. To emphasize the true relationships in a meeting the leader is viewed as one who serves the group. The group is, of course, servant to the problem. The problem owner is the problem’s representative and except in matters of behaviour his opinions are honoured. Differences with him are welcome too. They are aired, written down and the decision of how to use them is left to the client.

Action Teams

The problem owner should identify the team members. This could be done by choosing those keenly interested and involved in solving the problem. It may be a good idea for all members to go on a retreat to understand the problem in detail and to get know each other better. The best teams are small commando teams, where everyone is critically important. Set up ‘3S’ teams – Swift, Small and Strategic.. Here there are no ‘outsiders’, no passengers. Everyone becomes engaged in a small team and becomes completely involved. Each becomes a participant, there are no spectators. ‘How to create a small company mind, in a big company body?’ asked Jack Welch, on the eve of his revolutionary project to make GE, swift and profitable. The best teams are commando teams with 5 – 7 people.’ Within a positive field, genuine team work and collaboration is possible. In commando innovation teams, each one cares about the other, as in a close knit family. They give credit to others who contributed. If Devarajan receives a compliment, he says ‘Thank you. Shivakumar gave me this idea.’ Someone is not available, but when an outsider calls, the person answering says ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Everyone has a helpful attitude, whether the problem is official or personal. There should be a constant flow of positive communications among team members. A great team shares many characteristics with the human circulatory system. All feelings of exhilaration, celebration and satisfaction are shared. When the mission is in trouble, ideas are shared and joint action mobilized. A genuine absence of rank in solving problems is required where every member of the team does not hesitate to cross over lines of responsibility and correct what is wrong. All are on the same journey.

Owning a Problem

Call for problem owners. It is essential for every problem to have a problem owner (PO). It is this problem owner who will choose the solution that suits his resources map (6Ms and time). The PO is critical because otherwise the teams will have not have the necessary momentum to reach the finish line and side step hurdles. A problem without an owner is a baby without a mother. The Problem Owner Owner • owns the issue • describes it • directs the content of the meeting by: contributing wishes and ideas, selecting the avenues to explore, paraphrasing ideas to check understanding before evaluating • evaluates constructively • decides when a solution has been reached • commits to next action The team is working with and for this person. The problem owner is responsible to get as much as possible from the team. How the problem owner interacts with team members and their ideas will have a profound impact on the productivity of the group, so it is important that interaction with the team members is designed to increase their involvement.

Happiness Mantras

Happiness Mantra 1: Prana enhances the positive field and the vital life force flows freely through it. It creates a powerful positive field—a field of all possibilities where any seed of an idea will develop rapidly. Happiness Mantra 2: Meditation is the broom that sweeps out the negative emotions and pours in the honey of tranquility into the mind. There are many forms of meditation Happiness Mantra 3: Often our senses are scrambled and numbed by the hurry of life. Each of the senses provides us with new adventures and helps us to live more fully. Happiness Mantra 4: Enjoy the skill of the great architect of the universe. Happiness Mantra 5: In the silence, become aware of yourself. Be aware of your body as full of health and energy. Happiness Mantra 6: Be aware of your breathing, the beating of your heart. Once you are aware of your body in silence, in peace and tranquility, then you begin to notice immediately, the destructive effects of stress. Happiness Mantra 7: Be completely aware of the shift of feelings from moment to moment. Knowing exactly how you feel can help you make better emotional decisions. Happiness Mantra 8: The springboard is a tool that can help generate a positive field around you. When someone offers you an idea, first as a discipline, look for those things about the idea that please you. Happiness Mantra 9: A negative field is toxic with distrust. In the negative field, individuals are afraid to think differently; new ideas wither before they are formulated. Happiness Mantra 10: In the negative field, only the most obvious ideas, which appear practical and sensible will be shared. All but the most obvious ideas will be rejected. These ideas will be of little use because they are probably centuries old.

The Sixth Radiant Action For Social Bonding

No man is an island, but a part of the Main, wrote the pensive poet John Donne. Man is a social animal and needs to live in harmony with fellow human beings. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people, to communicate effectively with them, to identify what motivates them, and to work cooperatively with them. Intrapersonal intelligence is the inward ability to understand and form an accurate model of one’s self and to operate that model effectively to live life. Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard School of Psychology says that the two aspects of personal intelligence, interpersonal and intrapersonal, form the most important foundation for a happy, fulfilling life. For those who define success as happiness, these two elements are essential to learn and practice.

Happiness Mantras

Happiness Mantra 1: Each new day holds out a chance to create a whole new beginning, a sparkling new field of possibilities. Happiness Mantra 2: The ecology, the geography of your inner mindspace, is in your hands. Happiness Mantra 3: 'Swayambhu' is a word that describes happiness welling out of you, like an underground stream in the mountains. Happiness Mantra 4: Focus on Stress and unhappiness should be turned upside down. Instead of attacking unhappiness, we should plant a garden of happiness, by welcoming the positive emotions into our lives - love, compassion, wonder, courage, laughter and peace. Happiness Mantra 5: Focusing on our unhappiness by attacking it only helps to magnetize more power and attention to the negative person, event or object that causes it. Hence focus on cultivating happy people and avoid toxic people. Happiness Mantra 6: When the garden is clean and blooming and full of life, the snakes of anger have no place to hide; the thorns of greed get cleared away. When the clutter of old hatreds is replaced by order, the flowers of friendship bloom. The scorpions of revenge and jealousy slither away and the butterflies of laughter return to celebrate the flowers. Happiness Mantra 7: Too much television is ‘Tele-visham’ – (Tele poison). Too much stimulation, a mindspace crowded by fantasy people and events, distracts you from focusing on your own mindspace, your home, your backyard. Happiness Mantra 8: Some days we seem to live a fantasy life dominated by day dreams, while reality tugs at our heartstrings for attention, like a neglected child. Take care of what is yours and enjoy it. Happiness Mantra 9: Let the cells of your body be gently bathed in happiness, positive thoughts and healing energies. Happiness Mantra 10: ‘Physical fitness is the most important thing in life. The capacity to attain perfection of mind and soul depends on your physical health. Take care of yourself as no one else can do it for you.’ Happiness Mantra 11: All the ancients believed that no attempt should be made to cure the body without treating the soul.

An opportunity for Innovation in Indian business

India is poised to be the innovation capital of the world – the ideas supermarket. Far from being techno-coolies, Indians are giving innovative new solutions to the world in IT, life sciences, health and agriculture. e-choupal from ITC, is a synthesis from the fields of IT and agriculture – a mega vision that could link rural India to the world. Here are a few new trends in Indian business which could bring innovation center stage: * Entrepreneurship needs innovation. It is creativity that will fuel this emerging revolution. Over 18% of India’s workforce is engaged in entrepreneurship. Compare this with the 10.2% in US. Only Thailand ranks higher. India has moved from being a brand that stands for imitation, to a name in innovation. * India has filed 4,000 patents in 5 years. Over 100 top MNCs in India and Indian research laboratories are fueling the innovator’s dream. We need to overcome our innate dislike for selling knowledge, “Saraswathi”. We need to wake up. Multi-nationals have even tried to patent basmati rice and 2000 year old ayurvedic drugs while we dream of our glorious past tradition. * India’s 250 million people who live below the poverty line and 750 million who live on less than a dollar a day, need products and services that combine economy with utility. The CEO of Erickson asked a creative question, “Why do rural cell phones need a screen?” ITC and e-choupal in Madhya Pradesh has created an IT tool that can put poor soyabean farmers, in touch with the world. Poor fisherwomen in Kerala are being enabled to track the movement of shoals of fish, using satellite imaging with net linked PC. Arvind Eye hospital has created a cataract kit costing less than US$ 15. Poor Africans are grabbing it. Indians created the simputer in Bangalore. Innovation is required to turn India’s poor into consumers. If we succeed, the world’s 5 billion poor become our market, making the Goldman Sach’s report, that India will be world’s 3rd largest economy, come true. * India has the largest population of young people in the world. The marketplace is youthful and idealistic. We are “The world’s youngest nation”: 55% of Indians are now below 25 years age. 550 million Indians – the numbers are more than Latin America and the Caribbean put together. You can feel their vibrant energy in the media, on the street, in the upward streaking GNP. They want the world and they want it now! The ‘core competence of India’ is her brilliant young people. Our intellectual capital or mindspower is our Unique Selling Proposition (USP) provided we put it to good use. Planning Commission says, India will crack the population problem. With less children to care for, people will have more disposable incomes, resulting in higher saving for banks to collect and maybe higher consumption. India is shining with a growing literacy rate of 65%, 54% young people below 25, a 7 percent plus compounded growth rate. * The next item is a corollary to the previous one. In the words of Azim Premji, Chairman of WIPRO, on his success, says, “What made the difference, is people ……. Translating this experience into the language of economics, it has taught me that Labour is a far more important factor of growth than Capital”. We don’t need to read Amartya Sen to know that the key to economic leadership in India is education and health. If we can make our one billion people, fully, zestfully, human, instead of being half alive, the path to global leadership is open. How can we talk of equality or quality, when children in their mother’s womb, have their intelligence grossly retarded, because their mothers do not get even one full meal a day? * Personal excellence has become the only solution to escape being a victim of restructuring. Flexible, adaptable, innovative performers rise to the top, passengers are fired. Globalization and competitive scenarios leave no room for flab. Hierarchies are giving way to small, tight, commando teams. Departments dissolve into lean profit centres and strategic business units. Strict accountability is the rule. Entrepreneurship and intrepreneurship define all economic activity. Higher profit is the golden deer that corporations chase through 15 hour days and 7 day weeks. Corporate bonsais and techno-coolies who cannot call their body, mind or soul their own: Is this a Tofflerian nightmare or are we speeding towards this state of waning humanness in corporations? Health is the boat given to us to cross the ocean of life. We are responsible for keeping it seaworthy, is a corporate decision. * The dominance of services as the fastest growth sector of the world economy is an unprecedented Indian opportunity. We are not talking of ayahs to Asia and nurses to the Middle East. We are talking about doctors, hospitality and travel experts, teachers, customer service specialists (not just BPO bee-hives). Services: entertainment, hospitality, travel are on the roll. Indian call center employees are graduates (average age 23). They work for 1/7 of the salary of their European counterparts and earn about 8 times more than the average Indian. “The downside of aging economies, is India’s upside. The demand for services will make India the world’s back office.” * This is the age of knowledge. Bill Gates became the richest man in the world, At the speed of thought, leveraging knowledge and information. How are we, Indians dealing with the education of children? Are we training them to be innovative and creative leaders? Quality learning is as important as ensuring equal access to education. * Towards democracy and peace: India has been a democracy since 1947, which has managed a billion people without descending into anarchy. In the age of knowledge India has a population trained in handling dissent and fresh thinking. She should use this extraordinary resource. The Goleman Sachs report talks of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), of a far improved tomorrow in India, while the largest economies US and China face an aging population and shrinking number of workers and consumers. India’s productive human resources are growing rapidly. * Reversing the Brain Drain. The best brains have migrated to the West. Let India give them a way of coming home with honour. The reversal has started. Let government work to enable it instead of trying to regulate it. * India has the world’s most sophisticated technologies. The study of creativity and innovation as a science and a subject needs to be introduced in all educational institutions. When the scholar was on the Syndicate of Anna University, she could spearhead a move to include a 40 hour optional course on innovation in the undergraduate syllabus. To realize the mindspower of our people, creativity and innovation should be introduced into the core syllabus in schools and colleges. There is a need to establish Departments for Innovation and Creativity both at the Central and the State to create a million incubators for Indian thinkers. * Resurgence of Indian pride. This is a wonderful time to be Indian. Brand India has metamorphosed into a country perceived to be of brilliant people, rich in the ultimate software – the human mind. Today India’s young fuel the IT incubators of Silicon Valley, while swelling her foreign exchange reserves. Amitabh Bachhan in the BPL ad said, “Indians are the most creative people in the world – we use washing machines in Chandigarh to make excellent lassi”. Gandhiji’s “Be Indian Buy Indian”, has made a confident comeback. The world loves everything Indian: from the catwalks of Paris to the hallowed portals of Oxford, Aishwarya and Amartya have made us A1. Such confidence, faith and national pride will create the climate or positive field where innovation can thrive. Rekha Shetty (2004) Business Mandate

Webinar on Innovative Thinking

Madras Management Association and Mindspower have organized the inspiring talk series on Innovative Thinking. It is a wonderful opportunity to learn about Thinking Tools. Thinking tools helps to make decisions that will have a great impact on your quality of life. And if you want to ensure that you give your best for the most successful and happy life, to make conscious choices. That can be done with a simple thing by learning Thinking Tools. It is a 4 day online course in Innovative Thinking: 11th, 18th, 25th June and 2nd July 2021 at 10.00am to 1.00pm. For Registration, Mail us to mma@mmachennai.org with Your Name, Contact Number & E-Mail ID. Fee Details: MMA Member Fee: ₹2,360/- Including 18% GST Non - Member Fee: ₹3,360/- Including 18% GST (Please await our advice before making Payment) I am enclosing the brochure for your reference. Thanking you, Yours faithfully, Dr. Rekha Shetty Founder, Mindspower