Prakash's - Online Repository

I found this interesting blog post in Leading Answers blog.

To be truly effective you need ability and passion.

Some people use the formula:

ü  Performance = Ability * Passion

However, you also need time to dedicate to the work at hand; and so Availability factors in also. 

In the volunteer world we often say we are looking for 3 key attributes:

ü  Talent (Ability in some useful skill)

ü  Passion (motivation to do it)

ü  Availability (time to commit to it)

In other words you need to have skills, enthusiasm, and time to dedicate to something in order to be effective. (This also applies to paid work too, but because we get paid for things it is easy to mix-up motivation with payment and forget about considering if we are passionate/motivated about the work.)

Original URL

http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2008/10/three-dimensions-of-high-performance.html

1. Leadership Reading List
2. Team Dysfunctions and Scrum
3. What is in a Story?
4. Earned Value and Burn Charts
5. A Scrum Master's Checklist

This is the second part of my notes from the book Born to Win: Transactional Analysis with Gestalt Experiments

Human hunger for Strokes

Stroking is defined as any act of recognition, verbal or nonverbal, for another.   The term comes from the physical contact which is essential to the survival of the infant child.

Everyone has the need to be touched and to be recognized by other people, and every person has the need to do something with the time between birth and death. These are biological and physiological needs that Eric Berne calls as Hungers. The hungers for touch and recognition can be appeased with strokes.

Stroking Hunger

Beginning from childhood and throughout their lives people needs affection, recognition and praise.

Infants will not grow normally without the touch of others. This need is usually met in the everyday intimate transactions of diapering, feeding, burping, powdering, fondling and caressing that nurturing parents give their babies. Something about being touched simulates an infant’s chemistry for mental and physical growth. Infants, who are neglected, ignored or for any reason do not experience enough touch, suffer mental and physical deterioration event to the point of death.

As a child grows older, the early primary hunger for physical touch is modified and becomes recognition hunger. A Smile, a nod, a frown, a gesture eventually replace some touch strokes. Like touch, these forms of recognition whether positive or negative, simulate the brain of the one receiving them…

Strokes may be positive, negative or mixed.

• Positive strokes feel good when they are received and contribute to a person's sense of being OK. It is really required to develop emotionally healthy persons with a sense of OKness.
• Negative strokes hurt emotionally and make us feel less OK about ourselves. In Transactional Analysis even negative strokes are regarded better than none at all.
• There is also a difference between conditional and unconditional strokes. Conditional strokes are offered to employees if they perform correctly. Unconditional strokes are presented without any connection to behavior.
• Managers will get better results if they give more strokes in a behavior modification framework, where the reward is contingent upon the desired activity.

Discounting

If a parent discounts an infant’s feelings and needs, healthy development is thwarted. A discount is either the lack of attention or negative attention that hurts emotionally or physically.

A Person, who is ignored, tested, diminished, humiliated, physically degraded, laughed at, called names, or ridiculed is in some way being treated as insignificant. The individual is being discounted. Discounts always carry on ulterior put-down.

Being discounted is always painful. It leads to unhappy human relationships or feeds into destructive or going nowhere scripts.

Ignoring and isolating people are well-known forms of punishment. It deprives persons of even minimal stroking and leads to intellectual, emotional and physical deterioration.

If a discount is delivered through negative stroking, the not-OK message is sent either openly or by implication.

Giving and Receiving Strokes

• Don’t be insincere
• Accept strokes positively from other people
• Make a conscious effort to give strokes to other people
• Try to recognize other people’s reaction to strokes and the frequency/kind they appear to appreciate
• Ask for strokes when you feel you need them
• Give yourself strokes when you feel you deserve/need them

1. Transactional analysis is a theory about personality, personality development and communication
2. Transactional analysis is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change.
3. Transactional Analysis is a tool you can use to know yourself, to know how you relate to others and to discover the dramatic course your life is taking.
4. As a theory of personality, TA describes how people are structured psychologically. It uses what is perhaps its best known model, the ego-state (Parent-Adult-Child) model to do this. This same model helps understand how people function and express themselves in their behaviors (Unit of personality structure is the ego state)
5. By becoming aware of your ego states you can distinguish between your various sources of thoughts, feelings and behavior patterns. You can discover where there is discord and where there is an agreement within your personality. You can become more aware of the options available to you.
6. As a theory of communication it extends to a method of analyzing systems and organizations.
7. The unit of measure in interpersonal relationships is the Transaction.  By analyzing your transactions, you can gain a more conscious control of how you operate with other people and how they operate with you. You can determine when your transactions are complementary, crossed, or ulterior. You can also discover what "Games" you play.
8. Transactional analysis is a practical frame of reference from which you can evaluate your old decisions and behavior and change what you decide is desirable for you to change.
9. Transactional analysis is about what goes on inside people and between people.
10. Transactional analysis is both a theory and a set of techniques for relating to and working with self and other people.

Transactional analysis is concerned with four kinds of analysis

• Structural Analysis: The analysis of individual personality
• Transactional Analysis: the analysis of what people do and say to one another
• Game Analysis: the analysis of ulterior transactions leading to payoff
• Script Analysis: the analysis of specific life dramas that person compulsively play ou 

Transactional Analysis can help in

• Responding to a person and situation more appropriately
• Building rapport
• Understanding someone else’s needs
• Deal more effectively with difficult people
• Be assertive
• Understand how you behave and why

Reference

Born to win: Transactional analysis with Gestalt experiments

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis

From the Agile in Action Blog.

http://www.think-box.co.uk/blog/2009/03/what-makes-us-tick.html

Good leaders (managers) hire people smarter than themselves and don’t feel threatened by people who are better at given tasks.

The people you hire tell more about who you are than just your leadership style; they are a reflection of  your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy) and your confidence.

Originial URL: http://www.leadershipturn.com/you-r-who-you-hire/

Moving toward self-organizing teams--whether driven by adopting agile methods or not--doesn't mean that all the managers are out the door. There's still plenty of management work to do; it's just different work. And, for many managers, it is also more satisfying work. 

In this article Esther Derby describes how self-organizing teams are different from manager-led teams and lay out how that changes the manager’s role.

Manager-led teams are often like ski teams. Each person is selected for her individual skills and abilities as a skier. Each excels as an individual. All the members of a ski team are working for a common goal--winning the competition. Each contributes to success by making it down the hill as fast as she can, while passing through all the gates on the course. The coach's job is to improve individual performance skills. A ski team trains together, but when the meet comes, each team member is on their own. They don’t win by working together; it's the sum of the individual scores that wins the meet. 

Self-organizing teams are more like soccer teams. Each player has a position on the team based on her skills; however, the team must work together in order to win the game. In addition, each team member constantly adjusts her position and actions to create the best opportunity to score (or to prevent the opposition from scoring). If the team doesn't constantly coordinate and adjust to the current circumstances, it doesn't stand much chance of winning, even with star players on the team. Once the team is on the field, the coach can only observe and diagnose problems. He directs the team during timeouts and adjusts strategies through substitutions. Most of his work comes before the game, building individual skills. But even more importantly, he teaches team members to work together to achieve their goal. 

Original URL: http://www.stickyminds.com/BetterSoftware/magazine.asp?fn=cifea

I was talking to a friend of mine (who is a project manager). He was asking me how my current role is different from a project manager's role. I discussed with him about the differences.

I have consolidated my notes from readings and my thoughts.

PMI's Standard for Program management defines it as

Program: "A group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually".

Program Management: "It is the centralized management of a program to achieve the program's strategic benefits and objectives".

Enterprise Programme Management: Delivering Value defines it as

"We define enterprise program management as the capability to lead and manage resources, knowledge and skills in the effective deployment of multiple projects designed collectively to deliver enhanced value"

Program management provides assistance to:

1.    Ensure alignment of activities across multiple projects

2.    Optimize the use of resources

3.    Communicate with and involve people, both within and outside the program

4.    Drive the achievement of strategic objectives, and the delivery of benefits.

Program Management System

1.    Assists in the coordination of resources, timescales and scope across project teams

2.    Facilitates the effective deployment and sharing of skills and knowledge across the program

3.    Tracks and manages issues, risks, delivery of benefits and alignment to program objectives

4.    Provides executive management with a ‘dashboard’ on programme progress

5.    Provides programme management with the information and levers that they need to effectively manage program's.

The Handbook of Program management defines the Role of a Program Manager as

Program manager's role varies from managing multiple projects to managing multiple projects with operational responsibilities.

Typically, a program manager is subjected to all the complexities and stresses of a project manager, plus is required to manage ongoing operations while meeting business goal targets for the month, quarter, or year. The program manager often has to strike a balance between the amount of resources spent on operations and the amount of resources spent on development and new projects.

A program manager needs to have an ingrained sense of organizational mission, must lead and have the presence of a leader, must have a vision and strategy for long-term organizational improvement, must be a relationship builder, and must have the experience and ability to assess people and situations beyond their appearances.

Program manager is

·         Ultimately accountable for delivery of the business objectives.

·         Accountable for profit or cost targets linked to business strategy.

·         Accountable for policies that defines how the work is accomplished as it will have an impact on the business and cost targets.

·         Accountable for establishing a culture that allows his or her project managers to be successful. The program manager must create, manage, and continually improve the culture that enables successful projects.

·         Accountable for providing clarity and clearing chaos.

Program management decisions are both tactical and strategic in nature. The strategy aspects of these decisions must consider multidimensional impacts beyond the near-term delivery dates of the project.

Attributes of the Effective Program Manager

·         Being a program manager requires a greater skill set and more diverse background than being a project manager.

·         The most significant difference between project manager responsibility and program manager responsibility is the requirement for the program manager to establish a culture of success.

·         Self-regulation takes time to create, but it is the ultimate definition of presence. With self-regulation, the organization acts and performs just like the program manager would want it to even if he or she is not present.

·         Leadership is based on a relationship of trust, and program managers must consistently develop and use relationship capital.

·         The ability to accomplish objectives through others is directly correlated to the strength of the relationships or the relationship capital the program manager has developed.

·         Consistency in style, management techniques, and leadership traits are important anchors for any organization and contribute to a stable work environment.

·         Effective questioning starts with being perceptive and in touch with the organization—having a feel for the organization above and beyond what charts and graphs provide.

·         As program manager you want to establish a “self-regulating” culture where your team answers your questions before you ask them.

·         Decisions should be made quickly and at the appropriate level through the establishment of clear lines of accountability and escalation processes.

·         Long-term program success is dependent on the continued growth and development of program personnel.

Summary: A program manager is a Business Owner who owns the profit and loss of the group/program which he/she manages. It is more of a mindset transformation from a project manager's role. He / She is responsible for the overall accountability of the management of multiple projects, deliverables and budgets

As a Project manager, it is very important to solve people problems. Even as a Program manager it is very important, but the responsibilities are more than that. It is very important to empower the project managers in the program/group to handle such issues so that as a program manager one can handle the prime responsibilities of a program manager.

The success of a project manager is defined by how one executes the project and delivers the project within the triple constraints. The program manager also is judged on these three elements but at a level that is cumulative for all the projects and operations within the program. This aggregation of responsibilities for a variety of projects and operations means the program manager must make frequent trade-offs between business targets and project/operational performance.

As a Program manager, one will be responsible for the successful delivery of the Projects, creating a culture which enables project managers to deliver successfully, customer satisfaction, resource management (managing resources, recruitment, retaining employees, attrition, and employee satisfaction), risk management at a program/group level, responsible for the profit and loss, business development, meeting business and cost targets.

Books Referenced:

·         The Handbook of program management - How to facilitate project success with optimal program management

·         Enterprise Programme Management—Delivering Value

·         The Standard for Program Management

A great article that asks the question “Does your behavior damage trust?”

How might you be contributing to mistrust on your team? Here are 25 behaviors that contribute to creating mistrust within your team:

1.    You fail to keep your promises, agreements and commitments.

2.    You serve yourself first and others only when it is convenient.

3.    You micromanage and resist delegating.

4.    You demonstrate an inconsistency between what you say and how you behave.

5.    You fail to share critical information with your colleagues.

6.    You choose to not tell the truth.

7.    You resort to blaming and scape-goating others rather than own your mistakes.

8.    You judge, and criticize rather than offer constructive feedback.

9.    You betray confidences, gossip and talk about others behind their backs.

10.  You choose to not allow others to contribute or make decisions.

11.  You downplay others' talents, knowledge and skills.

12.  You refuse to support others with their professional development.

13.  You resist creating shared values, expectations and intentions in favor of your own agenda; you refuse to compromise and foster win-lose arguments.

14.  You refuse to be held accountable by your colleagues.

15.  You resist discussing your personal life, allowing your vulnerability, disclosing your weaknesses and admitting your relationship challenges.

16.  You rationalize sarcasm, put-down humor and off-putting remarks as "good for the group".

17.  You fail to admit you need support and don't ask colleagues for help.

18.  You take others' suggestions and critiques as personal attacks.

19.  You fail to speak up in team meetings and avoid contributing constructively.

20.  You refuse to consider the idea of constructive conflict and avoid conflict at all costs.

21.  You consistently hijack team meetings and move them off topic.

22.  You refuse to follow through on decisions agreed upon at team meetings.

23.  You secretly engage in back-door negotiations with other team members to create your own alliances.

24.  You refuse to give others the benefit of the doubt and prefer to judge them without asking them to explain their position or actions.

25.  You refuse to apologize for mistakes, misunderstandings and inappropriate behavior and dig your heels in to defend yourself and protect your reputation.

When you show up in integrity, authentically and allow your vulnerability, others will see you as genuine, warts and all. As such, your teammates will begin to trust you and gravitate towards you as you have created a personal container of safety in which others feel they can relate to you in an equally genuine fashion. Communication and true teamwork is a function of trust, not technique. When trust is high, communication is easy and effortless. Communicating and relating are instantaneous. But, when trust is low, communicating and relating are efforting, exhausting, and time and energy consuming. Finally, no one wants to give 100% to someone they can't trust.

Original URL: http://www.management-issues.com/2008/10/27/blog/does-your-behavior-damage-trust.asp

Via: http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2008/11/24/is-your-behaviour-damaging-trust/

I attended a training on Emotional intelligence recently. It was a 2 day session conducted by Dr. Smita Fernandez from Navgati. Emotional intelligence is not an easy subject to understand and i have tried reading the book by Dale Goleman before, but never succeeded. I was very curious how this training will be.

Dr. Smita facilitated the session very well and we (audience) never felt that we are attending training for 2 days. She made it so interesting and i really enjoyed the session.

Some of the key learning’s.
1. Emotions. Difference between emotions and feelings. Importance of emotions at work place and expressing them,
2. Difference between passive, aggressive, passive aggression and Assertive behaviors.
3. I always thought i am assertive but after the training, i felt like there are lot more practice required to be more assertive.
4. Impact of passive aggression
5. Overview of the different skills

a.     broken record

b.    fogging,

c.     negative inquiry,

d.    negative assertion,

e.    free information and

f.      workable compromise

6. Empathy.

7. Strokes - Positive and Negative. Importance of strokes in the work place

8. Goleman's Model:

a.     Knowing your emotions - Self Awareness

b.    Managing your own emotions - Self Regulation

c.     Motivating yourself

d.    Recognizing and understanding other people's emotions – Empathy

e.    Managing relationships, ie., managing the emotions of others - Relationship Management

Reference (Books):
When i say no, i feel guilty
Born To Win: Transactional Analysis With Gestalt Experiments
Reference URL:
http://www.businessballs.com/eq.htm
http://www.12manage.com/methods_goleman_emotional_intelligence.html
http://www.uiowa.edu/~ucs/asertcom.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assertiveness
http://www.counseling.mtu.edu/assertiveness.html
http://www.usq.edu.au/studentservices/counselling/issues/assertive.htm

A Classic. Its about Positive thinking. Great motivational book. I could not read much recently. I thought of reading something which i could complete it over the weekend. This book is a quick read and insightful Book.

Thanks to Venkat Krishnamachari (Microsoft) for suggesting and lending me this book.

http://www.amazon.com/As-Man-Thinketh-James-Allen/dp/1599869837/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220796921&sr=1-1

I found some good reviews about this book in the web.

http://blog.lifestyletransformations.com/as-a-man-thinketh-james-allen-book-review/

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81959.As_a_Man_Thinketh