Get Better at Getting Better

by Chandramouli Venkatesan

In successful people’s careers, there seemed to be a distinct take-off point, after which they were successful in everything they did. There were others who did not experience that take-off point. It was not that they did not taxi or could not make it to the runway, so to speak, but without the take-off, they ended up with only low to moderate success over time.

‘core capabilities’: People skills/relationships/leadership/personal value system Analytical skills/comfort with numbers/logical reasoning Conceptualization and intuitive skills/creativity/insightfulness Organized/disciplined/planned/efficient

observed that they were all excellent at continuously improving the above-mentioned four capabilities in themselves. The differentiating factor was that they had a model based on which they could improve in themselves anything and everything they wanted.

‘success is not about how good you are; it is about how powerful and effective a model you have to improve how good you are’.

I prefer the simpler approach of developing a model so that when I get to the future, my GBM is capable of learning and adapting to what is required at that time.

In a simple way, this is saying that more than acquiring just the content and the knowledge to succeed, it is important to build the capability to succeed.

Occasionally, we step back and wonder if there is a way of improving the productivity and the yield of the machine so that even if it runs the same number of hours as it does now, it will produce a higher output.

pay money to attend a training programme, but they do not think about how good their learning model is. Is that model efficient, or is it inefficient, thus wasting the time and money spent on the training?

Total learning = Effort put into learning x Quality of learning model

Success = Effort x GBM

And getting better has to be a deliberate strategy, independent of just playing more.

You must have a deliberate strategy for getting better,

At work, the responsibility for each one of us getting better rests squarely on our own shoulders.

These loyal soldiers focus on producing more results for the next year without understanding that if they don’t change their priority from getting results to getting better, there will be no career progress for them.

Results are transitory and belong not only to us but also to our teams and the company. But the extent to which you have got better in producing that result is not transitory; it is permanent and belongs solely to you. It is not a badge of loyalty to say, ‘I focus on results for my company over my own progress.’

Success is not about how good you are, but about how powerful and effective a model you have to improve how good you are.

Success = Effort x GBM The GBM at work is difficult to develop since we start on it at an age when it is not the easiest thing to do and we have to sustain that development till the very late age of almost sixty years. Most people have a poor/average GBM and instead of trying to improve the model, they just put more effort into being successful. The greater focus should be to improve the effectiveness of the model you have, and deliberateness is the key to that. Just producing results is not enough for success—while producing results, you have to get better so as to improve your ability to produce results in the future. Hence, it is important for us to prioritize getting better.

The purpose of getting better is being able to respond better to the future; if we get better, our response to the future will be better than our response today to similar situations. If we don’t, it becomes difficult to succeed.

An important question is to determine what areas you have to get better in and how you get better in those areas.

Don’t stop at knowing the answer; get to the method of finding the answer. Build your core capabilities.

But we often stop at knowing the answers, we do not master the method of finding the answers and hence struggle when faced with more complex situations.

Getting better by yourself: This is about deliberately getting better from what you do on a daily basis by yourself, without external help. Getting better by leveraging others: This is about deliberately leveraging all external resources available to you to get better. Make others get better: This is about deliberately building an ecosystem around you that multiplies your efforts. Making and implementing a get-better plan: This is about deliberately making a plan and implementing it to get better in a few areas of focus.

Get-better summary The purpose of getting better is to be able to respond to the future better. If our response to a situation in the future is not significantly better than our response in the present, we will not be successful. The first question is being clear about ‘what’ to get better at. There are two aspects to it: Don’t stop at knowing the answer; get to the method of finding the answer. Build your core capabilities. ‘How’ to get better is by developing a strong GBM, the model to continuously get better. Your GBM has four key components, which you should practise in a deliberate way to get better rapidly: Get better by yourself. Get better by leveraging others. Make others better. Make and implement a get-better plan.

The second way is to infuse into your model the skill of getting better by yourself using the day-to-day work. Instead of waiting for a practice session or a training programme, we can deliberately leverage what we do every day to get better continuously. This is what I call ‘get better by yourself’ and sometimes even ‘get better every hour’.

believe that getting better every day by yourself is more important than the specific efforts you take once in a while for the following reasons:

Start by wanting to get better every hour

In my experience, I would say, when you change the intent from a results-first intent to a get-better intent, the result is seldom adversely impacted. In some cases, the result might actually improve. However, the dramatic change is the extent to which we get better. It changes how we prepare for the meeting, how we engage in the conversation

and how we review ourselves after the conversation. Those have a great impact on making us better and on how we approach the next budget meeting.

Once you have the intent and set the right objectives for getting better every hour, every day, the next important thing is the technique. There are three key techniques explained over the next three chapters: The review process, to take us from knowing the answer to the method of finding the answer. The reflection process, to improve our core capabilities. The pilot’s view, to operate from a higher plane than our current one.

This is the million-dollar insight— if you want to get better, you should not stop at just knowing the answer, but get to the method.

It is important for you to understand the difference between knowing the answer and the method of finding it.

Only if you have mastered the method of finding the answer will you be able to respond to future situations.

‘What could I have done to have got a better outcome for the one hour I spent?’

get to a better outcome, you have to decode the method of finding the answer. That is why a review based on trying to get to a better outcome actually gets you to the method. Most of you would think that you are also capable of the same logical thinking and conclusions as Ajay. The simplest and easiest

If you want to get better, you should not stop at knowing the answer, but get to the method of finding the answer. To get to the method, we need a very disciplined and effective self-review based on the question ‘What could I have done to get a better outcome?’ When we are juniors, we get many of the answers from others. Even when we get answers from others, it is important for us to build the habit of getting to the method of finding the answer. As seniors, the purpose of reviews is to continuously improve your method of finding the answers to different situations.

However, if you want to fundamentally improve the capabilities you have, then you have to go beyond review to reflection. Review is about improving the method to finding the answer in a situation; reflection is about improving your core capabilities such

that you can do it in every situation, each time.

‘Why did I not arrive at that better outcome the first time itself?’ That is the reflection question.

Reflection in effect is a hindsight process of understanding your capability issues. After the event is over, you find out for yourself what capability issues prevented you from performing at your best the first time itself.

And that is when I realized the need for much better reflection, much more honest reflection, which leads us to the core issues we need to tackle. Living with a problem for a long time does not mean it does not exist. My strong advice to each of you is that do not ignore that niggling thought at the back of your mind that says you need to get better at something. Bring it to the front of the mind, be brutally honest with yourself and improve in those aspects. You will be much more effective and successful for it. And to help you do this, I have two tips on how to do superior reflection.

A great symptom of superficial reflection is the feeling of being frustrated. When you experience frustration, it is because you think you are doing everything right yet not getting the results and success that you deserve. It is a classic case of externalizing the problem. Frustration often sets off a vicious cycle in careers—the more frustrated you get, the less you focus on getting better and the worse your career gets. When you get frustrated, break out of this vicious, negative spiral by practising high-quality reflection to understand what you should get better in, without externalization, and then focus on that. Reflection is not about finding weaknesses and mistakes, but about finding areas for improvement. It is not something that somebody else does to criticize you; it is something you do to get better. Reflect with humility and openness and you will be better off for it.

Review is about getting to the method to find the answer; reflection is about improving your core capabilities. The simplest way to reflect is to ask the question, ‘Why did I not get that better outcome in the first place?’ It is about

thinking in hindsight about the activity and understanding what hindered you. And ‘I’ is crucial to this answer; it cannot begin with ‘we’ or ‘us’. Reflection is not as easy as it seems. When we reflect, we often end up externalizing the problem as opposed to understanding where ‘I’ need to get better. Use the two techniques of ‘specific reflection’ and ‘outside-in reflection’ to avoid that problem.

These are two different perspectives and often, as musicians in the orchestra of work and careers, we are unable to see the conductor’s perspective and improve ourselves.

In my days in marketing, I have seen this happen repeatedly—brand managers wanting more resources for the brands and products they are handling. But most of them, when they justify that need for resources, use the bus driver’s lens, the lens of what that brand needs. Very

few of them get to the pilot’s view, describe why that brand is important for the company and why the additional resources are required from that lens.

Most people in their careers keep slogging, keep burrowing like the squirrel, without understanding how to make a difference to the big picture. You will have a great career only when what you do makes an impact on the company as a whole. To be able to understand what you need to do to make that impact, you need to get better at developing the pilot’s view while being the bus driver. It is a crucial aspect if you want to progress beyond lower and middle-level management to senior management.

in a meeting where your boss is presenting to even more senior people in the organization, you get to see the passenger’s view. The important thing is to use that opportunity as a passenger to be able to develop the pilot’s view. There are a few things you can do for that:

Firstly, listen carefully to what senior managers articulate as important for the company to move ahead. Then evaluate whether your agenda is aligned to those priorities or whether you are like a squirrel, burrowing away on an unimportant agenda. How can you link what you are doing to the company’s priorities? Second, when things relevant to your work are being discussed, listen to how the same is being spoken about, which words are used, how it is articulated. Then ask yourself, if you had spoken on the same issue, how would it have been different? The two different articulations would probably reveal the difference of the view from the bus and from the plane. It is about the same topic, but spoken by people who are looking at it from different planes. What would it take for you to articulate your work, your agenda and your issues in the same way your boss and other seniors do?

When I observe people who have had moderate or low success, I find that they actually were working hard and with passion, but the issue was that they were doing unimportant things. The pilot’s view is important to guide you to work on what makes a difference. The pilot’s view also gives you an understanding of which core capabilities to get better at.