Get Better at Getting Better

by Chandramouli Venkatesan

is what I am doing actually making a difference?

It is important to be passionate about the bus you are driving and drive it with all your heart, but every now and then, you need to have the pilot’s view to ask the question ‘Are you driving the right bus and are you driving towards the right destination?’

To progress from lower and middle management to senior management, it is important to develop the pilot’s view while being the bus driver. Passion for what you do does not mean it is important in

the big picture. Getting better at seeing the bigger picture and seeing it from a higher plane is important for long-term success. To develop the pilot’s view, one can use the passenger technique effectively. Also, utilizing the chances you get to play the boss and consciously changing your view when you do that will also help you develop the pilot’s view. If you don’t get the above opportunities, then thought experiments on different scenarios will be useful.

Hence, I like to describe the journey of going from the answer to the method of finding the answer as going from domain dependence to domain independence. Only if we make ourselves domain-independent will we experience long-term career success.

And now I am clear—that model was based on me not stopping at the answer, but getting to the method of finding the answer, which made me domain-independent. That is what enabled me to cross so many domains. I do hope this inspires you to try very hard to become as domain-independent as possible.

The contract between the sportsperson and the coach is very clear—‘I want you to make me better and in return, I am willing to do anything you ask me to’. The contract, effectively, is a get-better contract, not a results contract.

we have to take the initiative if we want external help. Others are not going to set the agenda and drive it. You want to get better? You drive the agenda!

Giving feedback is as challenging as receiving feedback, if not more. If we make that process difficult for our bosses, then they will take the easy way out and not give us truly honest and important feedback. Be an easy person to give feedback to. You don’t have to accept everything that is said, but if you don’t make it easy, many things might not even be said, and that is your loss.

I recommend that you read fewer books. But the books you do read, you must know well, and also spend time applying the learning from them. You will realize that some books resonate deeply with you and that you can get better reading them. Please do make a special effort to master those few books and convert them from one-time reads to lifelong coaching experiences.

Books and training programmes have the potential to become change events in your get-better journey. Getting better by yourself normally results in continuous learning and a linear curve. Books and training can create step jumps and inflection points in that curve. To leverage them, it is important that you go beyond knowing the content to embedding the content—avoid the Friday/Monday syndrome. Be it a training programme or a book, make a list of things you want to imbibe and create time, space and discipline to embed them. Start the imbibing process from the next day—don’t postpone it. To fully utilize a book, it is important to read it at a fair pace. A book read over many months is unlikely to make you better as you lose the links between chapters. Some of the content may not be relevant right away, but might be useful to a situation you face in the future. You must know the content well to be able to come back to it when required. Books and training programmes improve your core capabilities and that is why they are crucial to getting better.

You can get better based on what they did by observing and then applying review, reflection and pilot’s view.

Just reflect for a moment on what would happen to the results you produce if each of these ecosystem partners became twice as good as they are right now. Yet, most people don’t understand this and hence, do not put enough effort into making others better. If all your focus is on you getting better, you are still leaving a lot of money on the table in your ecosystem. Some part of your effort must also go towards making others better.

To make your team better, there are two things you can do. The first is hiring better, which is about getting the right person into the team, and the second is about making the existing team better through your interactions and development inputs. I will cover both aspects in this chapter.

The key to hiring well is to reconsider and change what you are looking for in the prospective candidate. Most of us ask questions in interviews and then see if the candidate has the right answers. Instead, we have to try and discern if the candidate has a method of finding the answers. Secondly, most of us check if the candidate is currently successful. Instead, we have to shift to assessing if the candidate has a superior GBM, which assures future success. In most interviews there is one standard question that is asked: ‘Tell us about a major achievement in your last job.’ And the candidate gives an excellent answer describing an important achievement and its impressive

results. Results can be due to many reasons—because the candidate had a great boss, the circumstances were favourable and so on. The results are not what the person carries into the new job you are hiring for. What the person will carry into the job is the method of producing the results and the core capabilities developed while producing those results. In most interviews, the questions stop at the results and don’t dive deeper into understanding whether the person has a superior method of finding the answers, or has developed capabilities that are useful in the context of the new job.

‘What did you do in your previous job?’, ‘Tell me about your achievements’, etc. Instead, based on their CV, I present to them some future scenarios that I think will be important in my business, and ask them how they will respond to those situations. My hypothesis is simple—I already know what you have done. If you have indeed got better in that process, you should be able to respond better to similar future situations that I pose to you. In a way, this is testing a person’s ability to find the answers to future situations and the core capabilities they have developed. Past answers are not useful to me; the ability to find the answers in

the future is what I need to check for.

What did you learn from those achievements? How will those learnings help in the job you have applied for?

‘What could you have done to get a better outcome than what you achieved in that situation?’

From To Looking for the right answers for the questions you ask Looking for the method to the answers Assessing past success Assessing core capabilities for future success

Lastly, this method is applicable even when you select candidates from within your company for a role. What you are looking for does not change—you are assessing their GBM. How you do that might not be through an interview, but by other methods. Follow the same principles, whatever be the hiring source.

The simplest technique I have found to help them get better is to push for clarity on the ‘why’. Your team will often come and talk to you about what they want to do. My question is always about why they want to do it, what problem they are trying to solve and establishing clarity on that. When I push them to explain the ‘why’, the conversation automatically strengthens their method of developing the answer.

What is the consumer problem we are solving with this new product? Why can’t one of our existing products solve the same problem? Why do we need a new product? Why do you prioritize this over other initiatives in the business?

your team is to set high standards of ‘what is good’. When you consistently set high standards, they are automatically forced to get better to meet those standards. Sometimes, high standards can be confused with high targets.

And the feedback I gave was always structured on the ‘what’ and ‘how’. The ‘what’ covered areas I think they handled well, and where they could have done better. This could be about results, specific activities, performance against goals, etc. However, I did not stop there. I always went to the ‘how’. The ‘how’ was about their method to the answer, their core capabilities which resulted in the performance they delivered. I would give my hypothesis on what enabled them to perform well in some areas and what capability issues prevented them from performing well in others. When you stop at saying that you did not do well in an area, that is judgement. That judgement does not help your team member deduce how to get better. To help them progress, it is important to also give your opinion on the reasons they did not do well in that area. The purpose of an appraisal conversation is not to pass judgement, but to give feedback to help them get better.

To make people better, sometimes, you have to be tough, you have to push, you have to set challenging standards. People will accept this from you only if they respect your intent and your values. A tough boss with a selfish intent and poor values is the most destructive of all bosses—they are certain to destroy their teams, and even the company, in the long term. Making the team better is the objective, the intent, and values are the licence to attempt that.

To be successful, you must make your team better. The biggest benefit of a team getting better accrues to the boss. To make the team better, you have to change your hiring strategy: From looking for the right answers to your questions to looking for the methods to finding the answers. From looking for past success to looking for the GBM that predicts success in the future. The same technique helps you get hired. Don’t stop at giving the answer to a question; show them how you have built capabilities in getting to that answer and how those capabilities can make a difference to the new assignment. To make your existing team better, there are four techniques you can use: Focus on the ‘why’. Set high standards which force them to get better. Do not misinterpret setting high standards as a licence to setting high and unreasonable targets. Make the effort to drive formal training where you are the trainer. Leverage company processes like appraisals and development planning to make a difference to the teams. If you are trying to make the team better for your selfish gain, they will not accept it. The greatest gain from helping your team get better comes to you, but the right intent and values are the licence you require for that. 10 Leveraging the External Ecosystem Many years back, when I was the head of marketing at Cadbury, I conducted a session for the younger people in the marketing team.

Move from vendor to partnership mindset. Enable them to upgrade their people and capabilities with the right remuneration. Leadership role modelling.

The successful companies and individuals in the future will be those who can leverage their ecosystems as force multipliers and not as vendors and suppliers.

The philosophy of get-better is about getting better results for the same effort. That purpose is also served by leveraging our external ecosystem better. We must recognize that vendors don’t necessarily offer the same quality of service to all their clients. Our simple intention must be: how do we get the best out of them for their current capability? And to be able to do that, we must move our mindset from a vendor orientation to a partnership orientation. The quality of people in the ecosystem is crucial and the right remuneration can help that. To decide the remuneration, don’t look only at direct costs but at the impact of the partner on your business performance. A key aspect of improving the external ecosystem is cultural and is often a function of the tone and role modelling at a leadership level. Successful companies and individuals of the future will be those who can make their external ecosystem a force multiplier and that requires a mindset shift to start with.

Do not underestimate how much difference a determined effort to make your team and your external ecosystem better can make to your results and performance.

Externalizing this problem is not going to help you further your career. The real reason careers get stuck is because we stop getting better.

Prioritize getting better as opposed to only producing results. Start building your GBM afresh.

Take up a new role in a new domain where you don’t know the answers. You will be forced to get to the methods of finding the answers and to build new capabilities. There is, of course, some risk involved in this, but if the risk is manageable, I do strongly advocate domain change as a way of unlocking stuck careers. The first role in the new domain might not give you immediate career benefits as your performance in that role will be moderate, because you are still building the GBM. The first role will unlock the process of rebuilding the stagnant GBM; the career benefits will be in future roles. If you can’t get a new role or don’t want to take the risk, find a way of dealing with new situations even in your current role. Try and solve the more complex issues that you have been skirting so far. Try and volunteer for special projects in a different field in your company even if there is no career benefit. And when you get nominated to such project teams, go out of your way to make a difference and contribute; don’t stay within your comfort level. I have often nominated loyal, committed managers in the company to project teams to help them get better. It is frustrating when they don’t get out of their comfort zone to make a contribution and remain passengers in such teams. When you get an opportunity, make the most of it.

The world is not going to change overnight; you have to change if you want to succeed.

The beginning of that change is to stop blaming the world for your problems.

this. First, the ability to spot where change is required or the ability to identify the areas where change is required. The second is the ability to execute the change, which means making the change happen in a successful manner and making the change stick.

a spade as a spade.

To execute change, you must have a good understanding of the organization, its culture and its stakeholders. This is poor in the early stage. Driving change requires credibility for others to agree and follow you. While you might have high capability even at an early stage because of your experience, your credibility is built in a new role/company only over time. Your credibility is low in the early stages and not enough to drive big change. Do not confuse capability with credibility. Lastly, executing change requires reasonably good personal relationships with all key entities who will

enable the change and participate in it. These relationships are inadequately developed in the early stage. As time passes, these aspects start to change and your ability to execute change improves. Your understanding of stakeholders, organizational culture and key influencers gets better. Your personal credibility starts to grow and people are willing to follow you in a journey of change, and lastly, your relationships grow to be able to manage the change. Hence, your ability to execute change is at its highest in a mature stage. The challenge is that the two abilities required, the ability to spot change and the ability to execute change, are never high at the same time. So whenever you try to drive

change, you are weak in one of the two abilities. This is the reason most people fail to drive big change and th...

build the change content, leveraging your ability to spot change, and in parallel, build the relationships, the pipeline to carry out that change later.

One of the biggest mistakes I have made is rushing in with my agenda early on without building relationships.

‘If you were doing my job, what is the one thing you would do that I am not doing today?’

weakness. Another good way to improve the ability to spot change, especially for senior managers, is to attend high-quality training programmes that can be the stimulus to big-picture thinking again. A challenge in the mature stage is that the things that need to change are things that you have personally been involved in and have deep vested interests in. Hence, even when you hear from newer people that this needs to change, there is a tendency to rationalize

Your only assurance of long-term employability is how much better you have got, and hence, it is mission critical for employees in start-ups to focus on that and not get lost in the frenetic pace and rush of the start-up.

When we think ‘get better’, there are two aspects we need to consider—the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. The ‘how’ is the quality of the GBM, which is the pace and breadth at which you get better when you do anything, and the ‘what’ is the areas in which you need to get better. We saw this diagram in Chapter 3.

As we hit the work phase, the focus of measurement shifts from the measurement of our getting better to the measurement of the results we produce.

Bad results can sometimes result in tremendous ‘getting better’ if the review and reflection principles are followed. Adversity is a great teacher. Some of the best phases of getting better in my life have been in the difficult-result phases. In this situation, my ‘getting better’ is actually moving in a direction opposite to my results.