More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
If you manage to grow your skills, your knowledge, your decision-making ability, your judgement, your influence on others, your communication skills, etc., then you will experience career growth.
My belief is that if we stop focusing on career growth and put all our energies into real individual growth, towards deserving more, then we will experience greater career growth. It keeps our focus firmly on what we can influence, working on ourselves, rather than distracting ourselves with the thought of career growth all the time—which can cause anxiety and result in poor choices.
My understanding now is—the probability of getting the result you want increases when you stop thinking about the results and start focusing on the deeds for getting that result.
Instead the more you focus on the deeds which lead to career growth, which is real individual growth, the more likely you are to have positive career growth. If you stop thinking about career growth—the next job, the next promotion—and instead be relentless in growing yourself and becoming continuously better—improving your knowledge, skills, judgement, influence, communication, etc.—the more career growth you will experience. Real individual growth, my friends, is the catalyst, the ‘deeds’ for the result called career growth.
In my opinion, the impact of work on life is lower than the impact of life on work.
How we lead our lives has a huge impact on how successful we are at work and, indeed, in life.
Success at work doesn’t happen by just slogging at work; it is catalysed by the way we live our lives.
Time does not become experience by itself, even at work; it has to be catalysed.
This establishes that it is not the activity that determines whether something counts as experience or not, but the way in which it is done. The presence of a learning model as a catalyst determines whether the activity becomes experience or not. For both the Olympic athlete and us, the activity is the same—walking. But the former catalyses that activity into experience with a learning model, while we don’t.
Thus, the purpose of experience for us is not to measure what we have done in the past, but to use it to do better in the future.
One of the greatest success factors at work, therefore, is our ability to convert time and activity into experience (the algorithm). My view is that what differentiates more successful people from less successful people is the effectiveness with which they convert time into experience. It does not happen by itself; it needs a catalyst.
The presence of the learning model and the will to want to improve—these are the two drivers that the athlete has in walking that you and I don’t. Hence, it becomes experience for the athlete, but a mindless activity for us.
To summarize, having a target for the activity, measuring the actual performance and then reviewing the performance to understand why it was the way it was—that is the learning model that we need to employ in each and every activity to catalyse and convert our time and activity into experience, the algorithm. I call this the Target, Measure and Review (TMR) model—the most effective learning model at work.
Sales is a highly measurable function—there are targets, a measuring of actual sales and a consequent review.
Your boss does not review you with the intention of improving your algorithm for the time you spent at work that day.
Time is the single greatest investment and resource you put into your career. However, this time is not automatically converted into the experience and algorithm that will drive your real individual growth and career success.
To convert time into experience, you require a catalyst, and that catalyst is TMRR: Target, Measure, Review and Reflect. To make this effective, you must build an anchored habit of reflection on the question ‘What could I have done better?’
A learning cycle is any project, initiative or transformation that happens routinely in companies. E.g. a new product launch. That learning cycle starts with the process of identifying the need for a new product, building a business proposal for it, going through the product development cycle, including prototyping, researching and testing as required, building the manufacturing or service capabilities required and then launching it into the market. The learning cycle ends after the launch, when the new product has stabilized in the market, and corrective action, if required, has been taken.
...more
The TMRR is the ‘how’ of building experience and real individual growth, while the learning cycle is the ‘what’ of it—as in on what opportunity do you apply the TMRR.
The learning cycle is equivalent to the size, scale and stature of the stage on which the artist performs; the greater the size of the audience, the greater the prestige of the stage—the greater the opportunity for the artist to create an impact. Having said that, that opportunity for creating impact will be realized only if the artist performs well. How well the artist performs is the equivalent of TMRR for experience-building. Hence, the cumulative impact the artist can create is a combination of the scale/stature of the stage and the performance of the artist.
Successful people seemed to have participated in more major learning cycles than those who are less successful.
Successful people seemed to have extracted more experience and real individual growth out of the learning cycles they participated in than less successful people.
So what does it take to catalyse experience and real individual growth from the opportunity to participate in a major learning cycle? There are four things I have observed successful people do, and I would like to describe them in the following paragraphs.
Successful people have participated in major learning cycles, and these have often happened relatively early in their careers. For you to succeed, you have to similarly participate in a major learning cycle, and if one does not come your way in the normal course of things, then you must try and create the opportunity yourself. Successful people also extract the maximum out of the opportunity to participate in major learning cycles. They do this by effective implementation of the TMRR process, being at their best in the learning cycle, broadening their lens of engagement beyond just their
...more
most people are aware that to succeed, they have to grow their skills and capabilities, their algorithm, but they don’t realize that it is equally important to grow their productivity.
As you get to senior levels, two things change: first, the complexity of the problems/issues you deal with, and second, the number/quantity/breadth of the issues.
Superior capabilities and algorithm helps you deal with the
higher complexity of the problem, but it is only higher productivity that will help you deal with th...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Productivity is a complex subject comprising many facets including time management, prioritization, discipline, learning to differentiate the important/urgent from the less important/less urgent, the art of delegation, the skill of multitasking and so on and so forth.
One is called the circle of influence, which comprises all those things that you have an influence on, and the other is the circle of concern, which comprises things that impact you directly or indirectly, but which you
can’t influence. These are two concentric circles—the inner circle, the smaller circle, which comprises things that you can influence, and the outer circle, the bigger circle, which comprises things on which you don’t have an influence.
You are at your productive best when you focus on things which you have an influence on, which you can impact. Avoid spending time on areas where you don’t have any influence or impact. The other way of stating the same thing is that ‘highly productive people are those who spend all their time on things to which they can make a difference, where they have an influence’.
Of course, the benefits of this habit go beyond just productivity, as Stephen Covey explains. The more you
focus on your circle of influence, the more it grows, and slowly and steadily, it starts to cover more of the areas that earlier fell under your circle of concern.
This, then, is my second key to productivity—that productivity is not just about productivity of time but also about productivity of energy.
To increase your productivity, focus relentlessly on whatever is in your circle of influence. Spend all your time on what you can make a difference to, even if in the beginning it looks small. Avoid the circle of concern like the plague. It is not about how much time you waste there
you can afford to waste that time—but the more harmful impact of it is the energy it destroys, the negativity it creates in you, which then has a cascading impact even on the time you spend in your circle of influence.
A truism of life is that everything that is in your circle of concern is in somebody else’s circle of influence.
In an organization’s context, it could mean a co-worker outside your team, a vendor, etc. A good way of dealing with important things in your circle of concern is to identify in whose circle of influence they are, and then strike a partnership with that person. And for any partnership to work, there has to be a win-win situation. This means that there is something in your circle of influence which is of value to that person and you have to create value for him or her in return for your circle of concern issue being addressed. So the first approach is to strike up partnerships.
The ‘Rocks First’ Method
This is the greatest tragedy of productivity—that most people do not actually spend their time/energy/resources on what they think is important to them.
So these are my two methods to higher productivity—the circle of influence approach and the ‘rocks first’ approach.
To be successful, to generate real individual growth, just developing your experience algorithm is not enough. You have to employ that algorithm in a highly productive way. Your productivity is the means by which you convert your experience algorithm into value and results for yourself and your organization. The higher you go in the corporate ladder, the more the need to grow your productivity. And your productivity does not increase by itself; it has to be catalysed to grow. The catalysts I have used in my work life for my productivity are: Relentless focus on the circle of influence and
...more
what is in the circle of concern. Having a disciplined ‘rocks first’ time-allocation system, where I ensure that I provide my time/energy for the rocks and not the sand. If you’d like to, you can use my methods. If not, you can develop your own. Whatever be the method, please do not ignore your productivity.
Converting time into experience is the very bedrock of real individual growth. An effective TMRR model is the key to converting the time you are spending at work into an experience algorithm that will drive your success
in the future. Applying the TMRR algorithm on major learning cycles is an exponential way to drive real individual growth. Just building the experience algorithm is not enough. You have to parallelly grow your productivity. Productivity is the means through which you can convert the experience algorithm into results. The key to growing productivity is to focus on the circle of influence and to make sure you allocate your time to the rocks and not the sand.
We are very much in a VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world,
The nature of the organizational pyramid. The impact of the boss and supervisors. The preparation required to succeed at each level.
where you need to succeed is where it is more difficult to succeed.
if it is so obvious that there is tremendous ROI in focusing on foundation-building in the first half rather than chasing short-term career success, then why is it not practised? I believe there are three reasons for this: inability to delay gratification, being in the rat race of comparing self with others and, lastly, lack of knowledge and guidance in building the
