Serendipity and Learning

 I was working with a senior leader on a presentation for a leadership meeting. As he walked us through it, I asked a few questions on the story arc, how the dots join as per the story and shared a few suggestions. Now all of these were very obvious, but it was not obvious for the leader.  And the same thing happened with me a few weeks back when I had put together a proposal for an initiative and a colleague asked me a few questions that in hindsight was very obvious.  To me the learning from this is that as leaders we always have blindspots, so it is a good idea to check with a few peers for contrarian views - something that is missing.  Blindspots are bound to be there, how to ensure that as a leader you eliminate them as much as possible? 

How to sell a product 101 Send email: I'm P and I work with Q. I interact with visionary HR Leaders about their strategies for constantly changing business needs with technology. Would love to make your acquaintance.  The receiver (me) thinks, that wow, I am a visionary HR leader and instanty responds to the mail. Except that I am not a visionary HR leader. And even if I am, why would I respond to spam like this?  Strategy fail I get a few of these each week. Clearly some sales strategist has figured that young female profile -praise talent and pitch some product is the right way to do it. And they are all following it.  This is one example, I get some with slightly varying degrees of sophistication. One of them cleverly hid the fact that it was a sales pitch and presented themself as an L&D lead somewhere. Another invited to a non-existent conference/roundtable - you name it.  But - a note to those who sell. This wont work. 

Recently we were showcasing some of our work to a couple of "famous" personalities. And somehow, a few of them wanted to find things that were wrong rather than look at what we have created and appreciate the effort, the creativity and the audacity. At the level of accomplishment of these people, all they had to do was to be an encouraging voice.  On the other side, at work, we initiated a small initiative and just as we sent it across, there was an encouraging voice from one of the recipients about how this initiative reminded him of something else and so on. This was the second time this individual had been a encouraging voice.  And very often, thats all we want - an encouraging voice. Think about this the next time you are asked to give feedback on a new initiative. The encouraging voice can include suggestions and tips and tricks btw, doesnt have to be all pink eyed optimism. 

 I was travelling in a bus and the ticket dispenser failed - low battery. And whoever designed this system had no plan B. The conductor had no spare battery, no charging point or even manual tickets to give. So, he closed the bus doors and told the driver, we cant take any more passengers and sped to our destination.  Whoever thought of this wonderful tech did not think of a plan B in case it fails. Aside, the electronic ticket dispenser is slower than the manual ticket and at peak hours, it is quite an effort for the conductor to keep up. And most of them hate electronic payment at peak hours - simply because it is way too slow for them.  This is similar to toll boths in India (some of the high through put ones) which are faster than fast-tag (yet).  This does not mean that tech is bad or tech is too slow - it just means, it needs to designed and thought through better.