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Archive for December, 2009

A Passion Leads to Excellence based on Latest Block Buster Movie 3 Idiots

Dr. Shailesh Thaker - A Seminar on Learning a lesson from 3 Idiots Movie for Professors, Teachers, Students and Professionals at HL College Campus, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad - 380009.

Next Session coming soon at AMA

This past September, when Steve Jobs made his triumphant return to the public eye, he thanked precisely one Apple executive by name: Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer.

At an event to introduce a new line of iPods, Jobs first informed a crowd of journalists, analysts, and Apple developers that he now possessed the liver of a “twentysomething liver donor who had died in a car crash.” Then he thanked Cook and the rest of the management team for “ably” running Apple in his absence. Cook, in turn, led a standing ovation for Jobs, his arms raised over his head from the front row of a San Francisco auditorium.

With Jobs back at work, the conversation has been postponed as to whether Cook, or anyone else, is prepared to fill Jobs’ shoes. “At Apple the hierarchy is determined by who Steve calls,” says a former Apple executive. “There’s a lot of value in ‘Steve said.’”

Larry Ellison, a CEO known to dislike the topic of succession, says of his friend, “He’s irreplaceable. He’s built a fabulous brand. He’s got a wealth of products. Whenever he leaves, I hope he retires in good health and he’s sailing off in his yacht in the Mediterranean. But they’re going to miss him terribly, because it’s a consumer products company. The product cycle is so fast.”

There are signs that Jobs has inculcated the troops enough to last awhile without him. “The organization has been thoroughly trained to think like Steve,” says someone with contacts among the Apple executive team. “That’s why the six months went so smoothly. People could envision, ‘This is what Steve would do.’”

Jobs, in fact, inspires far beyond Apple. Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently told The New Yorker that Jobs is their hero. When Jeff Bezos released Amazon.com’s smooth, shiny Kindle 2, the Jobs envy was obvious. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape, says he often evokes Jobs in his advice to entrepreneurs. He says, “The threshold for the release of the first product should be, ‘What would Steve Jobs do?’”

Looking out on the next decade, Jobs may well be asking himself a variation of that very question: After creating more than $150 billion in shareholder wealth, transforming movies, telecom, music, and computing (and profoundly influencing the worlds of retail and design), what should Steve Jobs do next? Given his penchant for secrecy and surprise and his proven brilliance, it’s a fair bet that he’ll let us know when he’s good and ready.

Introverts have the right stuff when it comes to long-term leadership success, according to a recent Forbes article.
It’s claimed a recent study found 40 per cent of American executives consider themselves to be introverts with some of the highest profile ‘innies’ being Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
So what do introverts have that make them born leaders?
Apparently it all boils down to these traits:
* A ‘think first and act later’ approach - introverted leaders take the time to stop and reflect before responding.
* Depth over breadth - they are drawn to deep as opposed to superficial conversations.
* Calm and low key - it’s claimed introverted leaders project a calm sense of confidence even in the heat of the moment.
* The write stuff - to document their actions ‘innies’ prefer to use the written word as opposed to talking.
* Quiet time - spending time alone is said to energize introverted leaders, many of whom suffer from people fatigue.

Leadership matters even more when you have to symbolize purpose and values as well as look to the future. People look at what leaders do, not just what they say. So leaders have to model the values. They have to put their investments behind the sense of purpose. If P&G had let the Children’s Safe Water program wither just on financial grounds, employees would have looked at top management and said, “You don’t mean those words.”

Leaders also need two additional characteristics beyond the things we’ve always said they need.

They need to be great systems thinkers.
They’ve always needed that, but they need it even more as they look beyond the walls of the company. They manage their purpose through networks of partners. In fact, one of the values of these companies is end-to-end responsibility, the idea that you are responsible for your supplier’s supplier and your customer’s customer.
We also need leaders who are relationship-oriented, willing to have partners sit at the table, willing to sometimes put their own ego in check. Leaders need to feel they are safeguarding the future of the institution, not just managing a current portfolio of assets. These leaders have a sense of now and of generations to come.
Sam Palmisano said in one of the quotes I like best in the book: “Managers come and go, the business portfolio changes, so the only thing that endures is our culture.”

It can often be harder to sell a new idea to colleagues or clients than it is to develop a new concept in the first place.
There are five golden rules to follow to ensure your idea is given the attention it deserves. In summary these are:

1. Be purposeful - link the idea to an outcome or a way to eliminate a problem

2. Network it - involve key decision makers in your creative process as early as possible

3. Show don’t tell - avoid text heavy PowerPoint slides and instead use imagery or illustrations to show your idea ‘in action’

4. Timing matters - don’t rush into selling your idea if it’s still incomplete or tell a trusted critic before seeking out a wider audience

5. Protect yourself - be prepared to face some form of negativity, it’s inevitable but can be overcome