Decision Making: The chassis that holds

The Whole Together

A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between right and wrong. It is often a choice between two courses of action, neither of which is provably more nearly right than the other.

-- Peter F Drucker

It takes smart decisions and execution to traverse the new landscape, even with a strategy or map. And by that I mean the right colleagues, and the right collaborators, and strong customer connections -- everything that helps spur innovative thinking. When Peter and I spoke, we referred to this as the chassis -- the organization's ability to make well-informed decisions about what needs to be done and its resolve to get it done.

Peter was passionate about management effectiveness -- setting priorities, managing time, and making effective decisions. His internationally best-selling book The Effective Executive is very much about getting the right thing done. In the Lego world, with knowledge workers and a vast array of collaborators playing important roles in the enterprise, people cannot be loosely supervised. They can only be helped and supported in their ability as managers to make effective decisions. The days of the gray-suited micromanager hovering over his or her employees' desks are over.

Managing in this amorphous environment is a delicate balancing act between preserving what makes the enterprise strong and channeling innovation to go beyond past successes. Peter used a circus analogy: The company must constantly be on a strategic tightrope toward the future, finding this balance even as the safety net below is shrinking.

Logic suggests that decision making and decision execution, which define this narrow and demanding path, are made easier by today's vast amounts of information and knowledge. This is not true. Rather, the broad base of accessible information is rendered somewhat dense, difficult, and shifting by both the blurred boundaries between parties in the value chain and the speed of change in the market-these distinguish today from earlier periods in business history. As Peter put it, today's manager faces a fast-moving barrage of apparent knowledge, some relevant and reliable, some not. Because events shift so quickly, a decision can be obsolete before it even gets put in motion.

So, ironically, in the age of information, intuition and judgment play an even greater role in effective decision-making and well-placed strategic bets than ever before. Don't get me wrong. There is no substitute for fact-based decision making, and no excuse for managing from the gut. But with unprecedented rates of change everywhere, setting the right assortment of reliable facts can be impossible within the time window available to take action.

Sometimes we have to be able to see around the corners, and intuition and judgement play a valuable role in choosing which facts or feedback to trust. When store-based data began pouring in as Nivea for Men was introduced, the head of US marketing had a gut feel that the large discrepancies between stores had something to do with the surrounding demographics and Latino concentration. He asked that the facts be checked store by store. As it happened, the stores selling the most Nivea to men where in neighborhoods with very high Latino populations. From there the company began a targeted marketing campaign.

Although access to information was more limited in the past, the landscape was less volatile and managers could rely on certain assumptions or facts to inform decision-making in a reasonable period of time. Today, management's challenges are exacerbated by the increasingly bewildering transformation of the economic and social landscape. Forget predictability. Forest longevity. To make things happen, management has to step up and have the stomach to take risks. Beyond that, the culture of the organization has to support judicious risk taking.

Decision Making: The Right Risks

Certainly, risk taking has always been in the nature of business. Companies that took greater risks made it harder or riskier for their competitors to keep up with them. And they often have been the winners. Today's greater uncertainty along with the smaller room for error mean that decision makers confront even more risk. Managers need to move forward while taking the right risks, not necessarily the least risk. This involves making decisions at the right level of the organization, and having a disciplined, fact-based process for evaluating alternatives, making decisions, and acting upon those decisions.

Whether it has to do with customers, employees, corporate organization, innovation, or something else, decision making is uniquely and distinctly a management responsibility. Only management has the broad context needed to take into consideration factors inside the company and beyond such as market conditions or energy costs. However, as Peter liked to say, senior executives should not spend the bulk of their time making decisions - on the contrary, they should spend very little time doing so.

Their emphasis should be on making sure they have the time, information, and concentration to make the right decisions about the relatively few things that demand senior-level decision making and then making sure that the words are translated into action. That's not all. Management must stay on top of the results of the action, and know when to abandon a decision. Aside from this very focused decision-making, they should encourage appropriate levels of the organization to make decisions.

The amount of time spent in decision-making is a much less meaningful metric than the effectiveness and relevance of the decisions themselves - the results. In fact, as Peter said, the more time spent, the more likely that the decision maker is "too busy with the little to take the time to see the big."

The Linux Group is a twenty-first-century firm that keeps its "in-house" decision making focused on the big picture. Linux Torvalds established the group's purpose - to design and make a free operating system first for the PC and later on for powerful servers. At Linux, only a few people decide which of the many "outside-in" flows of suggested changes to include in new releases of the system.

All other decisions are the responsibility of volunteer programmers, who choose which takes to undertake, when and how to undertake them, and whether to work solo or in conjunction with someone else. Even this seemingly flexible and agile model is being challenged. Some long-term volunteers confide to me that Torvalds has become the bottleneck-too much is going on, and his control is limiting the ability of Linux to adapt as rapidly as users would like.

Decision Making: Four Drucker Questions

Management has a stark challenge: It must create a climate with the best chance that everyone in the organization is making the right decisions about the right issues at the right time. There is no prescription for doing that, but there are questions that will bring clarity, guidance, and focus to this amorphous area:

Have you built in time to focus on the critical decisions-have you lightened your load?

Does your culture and organization support making the right decision, with ready contingency plans?

Is the organization willing to commit to the decision once it is made?

As decisions are made, are resources allocated to "degenerate into work?"

Successful decision making begins with the recognition that making good decisions is one of management's most critical responsibilities. The organization and your management team can offer invaluable support, but you need to take the time and set aside the mental space to engage in study and problem solving, to try different alternatives, to think about the issue on the exercise bike, or to sleep on it.

Although the quality of your decision does not depend on the amount of time you spend arriving at it, it does require that decision making be a priority and a commitment to spending the time needed. To be bale to do this while running an organization, you need to lighten your load-to cut through the fog in order to see clearly what situations really demand action and to find the appropriate decision maker. You can then concentrate on the relatively few important decisions that are yours to make.

Is Action Required?

For reasons that go beyond the obvious waste of precious time and resources, unnecessary decisions bring unjustifiable risk and repercussion. As Peter put it, no matter how innocuous the decision may seem, "Every decision is like surgery. It is an intervention into a system and therefore carries with it the risk of shock. One does not make unnecessary decisions any more than a good surgeon does unnecessary surgery."

In judging whether a given situation or opportunity warrants action or not, several rules can be applied.

Applying these guidelines helps draw a distinction between the truly important and the seemingly important situations that are, in fact, simply nuisances. The latter can correct themselves -- they don't require major action. These rules will lighten the decision-making load by eliminating the situations that don't require intervention.

Excerpted from:

The Definitive Drucker by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim. Copyright 2007 by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim. Price: Rs 475. Reprinted by permission of Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Company Limited. All rights reserved.

(Elizabeth Haas Edersheim is a strategic consultant who works both with Fortune 500 companies and private equity investors. - http://us.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/25book.htm)

Dream big and achieve it

Dreaming big is important. So remove the barriers that will stop you dream.

Every great accomplishment begins with a seed of belief. Today, the sounds of classical guitar are both familiar and popular. But early in the 20th century, the style of music didn't even exist. In fact, the classical guitar was practically invented by one man. His name was Andres Segovia. A native of southern Spain, he began playing the guitar at a young age and was taught that its use was limited to that of a folk instrument. But Segovia believed it could be more. He believed that he could take the classical compositions of masters like Bach and learn to play them on his guitar, which he did. Before long he was studying the techniques of other classical instruments such as the cello and violin, and adapting his own techniques on the guitar, playing current classical pieces as well as composing his own. Thus was born the sounds and style of classical guitar.

As a result of Andres Segovia's belief that his abilities on guitar could transcend the current musical spectrum, the classical guitar has become a staple in the world of classical music and is currently one of the most popular types of music that young musicians aspire to learn. A testimony that the status quo is never the limit of possibility in your field of endeavor.

"Always remember there are only two kinds of people in this world," said Robert Orben, "the realists and the dreamers. The realists know where they're going. The dreamers have already been there." What stands in the way of dreaming big in your own life? The following are three of the most significant barriers to dreaming big dreams. As you review them, ask yourself whether one or more are keeping you from really going after what you truly long for.

1. Fear. Vincent van Gogh said, "The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore." Is there a particular fear that is keeping you from venturing out to the big sea of possibility? Fear of failure? Fear of success? Fear of insufficiency? Whatever the case may be, before you pack up ship ask yourself: What's the worst that could happen by trying to achieve my dream? If the best that could happen outweighs the worst that could happen, move forward in confidence.

2. Lack of knowledge. "Where there is an unknowable," said Thornton Wilder, "there is a promise." Just because you don't know all the details, that's no reason to keep from dreaming big. History is strewn with great discoveries that came as a result of an adventurous soul simply venturing into the unknown with a dream to make a difference. If you're using lack of knowledge as an excuse for not pursuing your truest dreams, ask yourself: What is the least I need to know in order to go for it? Seek to gain that knowledge, and then move forward.

3. Negative associations. "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions," said Mark Twain. "Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great." What type of people do you associate yourself with? Are they people who are as excited as you are to see you achieve all that you desire? Will they hold you accountable for doing the things you need to, to get where you want? "Show me who you frequent," reads a French proverb, "and I will tell you who you are." To ensure that those you associate with aren't keeping you from your dreams, ask yourself: Do I spend more time with dream makers or dream breakers?

So in order to dream well one should be able to throw away and shed the negative effects in one's life and be able to take care of that so that he can dream and fulfill it accordingly and be satisfied at the end of the day.

(by Debasmita Chanda, http://living.oneindia.in/expressions/dream-big.html)

Go Kiss the World!

(Welcome Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting to the Class of 2006 on July 2, 2004 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India on defining success)

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government - he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it".

That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes.

That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the mimetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity - was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world!!

Stop the Gossip, Save Your Career!

Getting ahead at work may hinge on resisting the urge to spread the latest news about your coworkers.

"You may think gossip is harmless, but you might just be shooting yourself in the foot as far as your credibility goes," said Rachel Weingarten, author of "Career and Corporate Cool: How to Look, Dress and Act the Part at Every Stage of Your Career." She continues, "Let your work speak for itself. You don't need to be the one making yourself look better by talking down someone else."

Consider the Damage

Sure, gossip can be almost too enticing to keep to ignore -- but consider these consequences:

You lose your reputation. "My reputation is my business," said Weingarten. "If someone says something bad about me, or I become known as a gossip, that could affect my entire career."

Coworkers avoid you. "If people view you as a gossip, they may stop sharing information with you," said April Callis, president of Gossip Stoppers, a program designed to create positive workplaces. "Then instead of being the one with all the power and information, you're out of the loop because no one trusts you."

Your work suffers. The negativity spread by gossip makes people hate their jobs. "They miss work, they get less done while they're there, and they feel unappreciated," says Callis. Suddenly, you're not giving your best, and your boss may notice.

There's a better way to deal with water cooler talk. First, and perhaps most obvious: Keep the information to yourself.

It's one thing to learn the office scoop -- it's another to share it. Even asking someone else at work to verify what you've just heard counts as gossip, said Callis. If it's something criminal, tell your boss. If not, let it drop.

Resist the Urge

Next, teach your coworkers not to gossip with you. Use these techniques:

Replace gossip. Sometimes gossip is the only thing you have in common with coworkers, said Weingarten. So find something to replace it. Do you both knit? Are you both sports fans? If you must gossip, do it about movie stars or soap operas, she said. Just leave the office out of it.

Set a timer. If a coworker or employee comes to you determined to gossip, set a timer for five minutes, and let the person spew. When the time's up, so is the gossip. You don't have to respond, said Callis. You can just listen.

Write it down. When a coworker runs to your desk with the latest juicy gossip, get out a pad and pen. Writing down the facts serves two purposes: It shows the gossip that everything she says is being documented. And it helps you focus on facts instead of feelings.

What you may find is that you and those around you feel happier as they gossip less, says Callis.

"When I walk into a positive workplace, people are engaged and they feel valued," she says. "They stay."

Sensex: 1,00,000 mark in our lifetime?

Sometime in mid-August, at the height of the sub-prime crisis in the US, Tata Mutual Fund MD Ved Prakash Chaturvedi predicted that we might see the 1,00,000 mark for the Sensex index in our lifetime.

 

It sounded outlandish as the markets were then battling the fast FII outflows in July and the Sensex fell below the 14,000 mark), but Chaturvedi said he is on record on his forecast.

Morgan Stanley, in a report released early this year, forecast 50,000 for Sensex by 2020.

First Global Securities head Shankar Sharma, early this month, said he will not be surprised if the index touches 25,000 to 30,000 in the next 12 months or so.

All the three predictions look quite possible now (and perhaps, in much quicker time), going by the frenzied pace at which stock prices are rising here.

Are we getting into the euphoria territory? After all, in all bull markets, the stocks rise faster and steeper in the last stage - before the end. Be it the Harshad Mehta-period, or the Ketan Parekh-cum-dotcom period. But experts say the party has just begun (take it as half-way stage).

One reason they cite is that companies are growing at 20 per cent-plus rate, and that Indian markets perhaps are getting re-rated; meaning investors are ready to pay higher multiple for profits.

Historically, Indian stocks trade at earnings multiple of 17-18 times. At current prices, the earnings multiple for the Sensex is 26 times.

A re-rating would mean investors would be willing to buy stocks at earnings multiple to 20-25 times, according to Seshadri Bharatan of Dawnay Day.

During the Harshad Mehta-bull run (which eventually ended in scam in early 1990s), the prices rose to a dizzying 41 times earnings.

This week, which marks the 20th anniversary of the Black Monday (when stock prices crashed in the US), FIIs are flocking to the market, as if there's no tomorrow.

In India, after the four-year bull run, when stocks rose by an average of nearly 45 per cent-plus every year, new and new investors (both foreign, and even domestic) are coming in, in the belief that stocks will give positive returns, over longer periods.

"At every dip, new investors, who have missed the bus, will enter. So, we see the Indian markets, like any other markets abroad, may give positive returns," says Bharatan.

There are only a few exceptions, across the globe. For instance, Japan's Nikkei is at 17,300 levels, less than half of its peak of 38,915 during 1980-end.

Experts say India is different. Fundamentals, and of course, liquidity, will continue to pull up the markets further, at least for another couple of years.

(http://in.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/16mkt.htm)

Motivation Secrets

(An excerpt from John Baldoni's book Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders (McGraw Hill 2005), published by GovLeaders.org.)

By all rights, they were done. Deep inside enemy territory, their putative leader dead, they should all have been slaughtered. But it didn't work out that way because their nominal leader, Cyrus the Younger, a Persian prince, was not their real leader. Their genuine leader, Xenophon, a Greek general, was one of their own, respected, trusted, and elected.

The Greeks were superior fighters, both tactically and technologically. They knew how to fight as a team, and their swords and shields were uniquely adapted for their phalanx warfare. They also possessed the most salient edge of all: leadership. Xenophon, like all Greek commanders, led from the front; he was seen in the thick of combat, never flinching, always seeming to do the right thing. Amazingly, Xenophon returned with the majority of the Ten Thousand, incurring few casualties in war, but losing some to weather and treacherous terrain in the mountains. Historian Victor Davis Hanson attributes Xenophon's success to the superior Greek culture-not superior in a racial sense, but superior in the sense of what we today would call shared values, common purpose, and genuine leadership.

Two millennia and four hundred years later, another disaster morphed into rebirth. Malden Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, caught fire and burned to the ground. The smart business decision for the owner would have been to take the nearly $300 million in insurance money and retire; he was in his seventies, after all, and the few textile manufacturers remaining in his area were looking for any excuse to leave New England, not to stay. But not Aaron Feuerstein. Immediately after the fire, he pledged to rebuild the plant that made the popular Polartec fleece. In addition, he said that he would keep all employees on the payroll during the reconstruction. Feuerstein was hailed as a hero and received acclaim far and wide. He took this in stride, saying that he had just done the right thing. It was not the right thing financially; the costs of meeting the payroll and reconstruction exceeded the insurance settlement.

A few years later, Feuerstein found himself in financial straits, and this time the employees returned the favor. They foreswore overtime and settled for lower wages in an effort to keep the plant running. It was a classic example of leadership begetting leadership. In October 2003, Malden Mills emerged from bankruptcy.

Motivation is one of those topics about which much is preached with little result. The reason is simple: Leaders do not motivate-not directly, anyway. They do it indirectly. Motivation is an intrinsic response; it comes from inside and cannot be imposed from the outside. Motivation comes from wanting to do something of one's own free will. If you are free, you can choose to do something. Take the Greeks under Xenophon. They chose him as their general. Why? Because they believed that he had the right combination of skills and talents to lead them into battle and, as circumstances would have it, out of battle, too. The same holds for the employees at Malden Mills. While they had no say in the choice of Feuerstein as CEO, they did have a choice when it came to negotiating for a pay raise. They chose to accept lower wages because they perceived that it was in the company's best interests, as well as their own, to make a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain.

Both the Greeks and the employees were motivated to do what they did. To turn the situation on its head, Xenophon could have compelled the soldiers to follow him through force-after all, that was the way things were done in the Persian army and in the army of Alexander the Great a century later-but it is doubtful that compulsion of this sort would have led so many men to safety; instead, one by one, they would have drifted away to fend for themselves. Likewise, at Malden Mills, Feuerstein could have insisted on getting a better wage deal, but he did not; the union members accepted lower wages of their own accord, thereby avoiding acrimony and building upon the loyalty Feuerstein had shown them earlier when he rebuilt the burned-out facility.

The short answer is leadership. Leadership is about getting things done the right way; to do that, you need people. To get people to follow you, you need to have them trust you. And if you want them to trust you and do things for you and the organization, they need to be motivated. Motivation is purely and simply a leadership behavior. It stems from wanting to do what is right for people as well as for the organization. If we consider leadership to be an action, motivation, too, is an active process. And if you go deep enough, motivation itself is driven by a series of actions grouped under three headings: energize, encourage and exhort.

Energize

Energize is what leaders do when they set the right example, communicate clearly, and challenge appropriately.

Exemplify. Motivation starts with a good example. Leaders who hope to motivate must reflect the vision, mission, and culture of the organization they lead. What they do says more about who they are as leaders than what they say. The example they set will be the one that others follow. The leader who preaches the value of teamwork and volunteers to help out teams in need is demonstrating the right example.

Communicate. Communication is central to leadership; it includes how the leader speaks, listens, and learns. The leader who wishes to motivate must communicate a vision and a mission and follow up to check for understanding. People need to know what to do, but they also need to know that their leaders are listening. Motivation can occur only if two-way communications occur.

Challenge. People like to be challenged. Leaders who tap into this need can achieve powerful goals because they will be linking those goals with the fulfillment of desires. The hard part of crafting a challenge is to focus on what is attainable in ways that are energizing and exciting and play upon people's imagination and creativity.

Encourage

Encourage is what leaders do to support the process of motivation through empowerment, coaching, and recognition.

Empower. Leaders soon learn that their real power comes from others. It is by unleashing the individual talents and skills of other people that they can achieve their intended results. The release of this collective energy can occur only if the leader grants people the responsibility and authority to act. Empowerment becomes a powerful motivational tool because it puts people in control of their own destinies.

Coach. It is a leader's responsibility to provide people with the right support to do their job. The bedrock of that support can be found in the relationship between manager and employee. The best way to nurture that relationship is through frequent and regular one-on-one coaching sessions. Coaching provides the opportunity for the leader to get to know the employee as a person and how she can help the employee achieve personal and organizational goals. Coaching also begins the process of creating the next generation of leaders.

Recognize. The need for recognition is paramount. Recognition may be the single most powerful reason that people work, aside from income. It is fundamental to our humanity that we want people to recognize what we do and how we do it. When people are recognized, they become motivated; they want to do the work, and they want to do it well.

Exhort

Exhorting is how leaders create an experience based on sacrifice and inspiration that prepares the ground upon which motivation can flourish.

Sacrifice. The truest measure of service is sacrifice, putting the needs of others ahead of your own. When employees see their leaders put other people first and do it by putting aside their own ambitions, they learn to trust their leaders. Sacrifice is a form of commitment to others.

Inspire. Motivation really comes down to inspiration. Since motivation comes from within, it is a form of self-inspiration.

The Facts on Motivation

The need for motivation is very real. In his book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida describes those who use their knowledge to create something new and different as members of the "creative class," a group that includes some 38 million people. Using survey data gathered in 2001 by an IT newsweekly, Florida identified a number of factors that influence motivation at work for IT professionals. Money was a factor, but it ranked fourth, behind challenge, flexibility, and stability. Of the respondents, 67 percent said that they wanted "challenge and responsibility" in the workplace, 53 percent sought flexibility, 43.5 percent wanted stability, and 38.5 percent said that base pay was important. Other key factors noted by more than 20 percent of the respondents were job atmosphere, casual attire, training, contribution to success, and recognition.

While Florida's research pertains to IT professionals, and by extension to other creatives, the lessons from it pertain to anyone who manages bright, knowledgeable, and talented employees. You need to develop a work environment that offers challenges, grants responsibility, and offers a degree of flexibility as well as an opportunity for growth and development and recognition. All of these factors are in addition to pay. When these factors are not present, workers become dissatisfied, and their interest and subsequent productivity decline. They also will look for opportunities to leave, thereby wasting the organization's investment in their training and development.

Has there ever been a greater need for managers to create a desirable, hospitable, productive work environment in which employees can find challenges and be rewarded financially, emotionally, and psychically? Motivation is not something that's nice to do. It's a must-do, but it's a must-do that pays dividends for all who participate.

Motivation Planner

Motivation, to paraphrase General Dwight Eisenhower, is about getting other people to do something because they want to do it. Use the following questions to assess your situation and how you might begin to create conditions in which people would feel more motivated.

Think about where you work and the people who work there. As you think, consider the following:

1. Why do people come to work? For a paycheck? For recognition?
2. Do people feel motivated-that is, do they like to be at work because it is an enriching experience? If not, what is missing?
3. Consider the motivation model-energize, encourage and exhort-then think about the people in your organization.
   
   Are the leaders setting the right example?
   Are the leaders communicating?
   Are the leaders challenging their people?
   Are the leaders empowering others?
   Are the leaders coaching?
   Are the leaders recognizing?
   Are the leaders sacrificing?
   Are the leaders inspiring?
4. What could you do to improve the climate for motivation?

10 effective ways to stay motivated

Shruti Sinha*, software engineer, thought it was end of the road for her when she was not selected for an overseas assignment. "I was completely sidelined and to top it, two of my team members were chosen over me. For the next few days, I was at home, crying helplessly as if my whole life was over. I was totally without any motivation in life and didn't even want to go back to work anymore. I still feel lousy."

Shruti just wallowed in misery and didn't give it a second thought, but let's take more a serious look. Was it all so terrible? Why did she assume her career was over or out of her control? Are any of our careers really out of our control? If so, in whose hands do the controls lie?

Our bosses? Our circumstances? Or we, ourselves? There are times when you feel like you are on a roll, and nothing can get you down. And then there are times when it seems that the road to success is filled with nothing but boulders and gaping potholes. It is on this rutted road that you need motivation the most.

Motivation comes from within. You might be inspired by achievements of others, but, to go far in life, you need to feel charged and determined to achieve your goals.

Try these tips on how to be self-motivated to get your work life back on track or to keep going top speed on your career path!

1. Be confident. If you don't believe in yourself, why would anyone else? We all have something we are good at. Have faith in yourself and try to work on your niche skills. Drive the fear of failure far away from you. Remember, what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger!

2. Be clear. Fuzzy, undefined goals are difficult to focus on. How will you proceed when the path seems all foggy? Request your manager for defined, measurable objectives and tasks.

If your manager is not very forthcoming, take some initiative and work with him until you have clarity about your role and what you will be appraised on, at the end of the year. Self-motivated people work best with clearly defined objectives in life. Even if the targets seem a little hazy, house-bred motivation can come in real handy!

3. Work on yourself. Nothing works better as a power shot of motivation than the knowledge that you are good at what you do! Be on top of things at work. Identify your weak areas and get them out of the way. Enroll in courses that will raise your market value and also your motivation levels. Getting a few certifications and qualifications in your functional skills will definitely instill a great deal of confidence.

4. Take criticism positively. Even though the other person has no such intentions, turn all negative criticism into a positive driving force. Failure is a state a mind. If you think you can succeed, you will. Always think positive. That way, instead of brooding over past disappointments, you will route your frustration into positive energy required for working harder. It works like magic.

"My boss was always running me down. Even when I did a good job, he never praised me. Initially I used to feel terrible and slowly started to look for excuses to avoid official meetings when he would once again find reasons to discourage me. I contemplated resigning and finding a new job where I did not have to prove myself over and over again," recounts Mohit Sethi*.  "But then, there were no guarantees that my next boss would be better to work with. So, I took it up as a challenge. I started reporting to work early and always finished my tasks before time. My team members started to respect me more because I helped them when my work was done. Gradually, my boss took a back step when he realised that I was now a highly productive member of the team. If I had not been self motivated to prove a point, thoughts of having failed and run away would have chased me forever."

5. Look out for challenges. If the current job demotivates you, not to worry. Be open to try out new things if your present role has become too boring to continue even a day more. Talk to your seniors to redefine your role to optimise your capabilities. Establish your reputation as somebody who is not scared to take on new challenges in life.

6. Be persistent. Most things may not work out right the first time. This just means that you need to try harder. However, ensure that you set your heart on goals that are really important to you and will help you progress in life. Save your efforts for things that matter. Do not waste your energies on peripheral things.

7. Keep the company of successful people. Try to surround yourself with confident people who are driven and high on life. Read books that fill you with optimism. Put up motivating posters and quotes on your workstation that will spread positive energy and drive away any depressing thoughts. Look around for successful people and try to emulate them. Find out what makes them tick and include that in your working style.   

8. Celebrate life. If something doesn't shape up like you thought it would, it does not mean everything else is doomed as well. Do not feel stressed; high stress leads to low motivation. Take active interest in things happening around you. Live your life well. Continue to have faith in yourself and get involved in things that give you happiness. That itself will generate enough motivation for you to glide over waves of setbacks. 

9. Start today. List all that is important for you to achieve your goals. Divide long-term goals into smaller milestones and celebrate each accomplished goal. Procrastination is a killer so keep it at bay.

10. Keep dreaming. Lastly, do not forget to keep dreaming. Dream big! Let your dreams fuel your desire to get closer to your goals. Write your dreams for yourself in a diary or a journal and constantly refer to them so that you do not forget or lose sight of the objective. 

Remember, "Motivation is all about how high you can bounce when you hit absolute rock bottom."

(http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2007/oct/11motivate.htm)

Want to succeed? Avoid these 9 traps

Success leads to the damaging behaviors of a lack of urgency, a proud and protective attitude, and entitlement thinking. This leads to the tendency to institutionalize legacy thinking and practices. Essentially, you believe that what enabled you to become successful will enable you to be successful forever.

After reviewing this problem in many companies, I believe there are nine dangerous traps into which successful people and organizations often stumble.

Trap 1: NEGLECT

Sticking with Yesterday's Business Model

By business model, I mean what you do and how you do it. It includes such issues as deciding what industry you will be competing in and what approaches you will use in carrying out all the processes necessary to compete in that industry. Will we manufacture something or contract it out? How will we sell our products or services?

Do we go through retail channels? How should we organize our sales force? Which segments of the industry do we want to ignore, and which do we want to compete in? What is the structure of our support staff? Which parts of the organization do we out source? What are our approaches to distribution and inventory management? What are the cost targets of the various components of the organization, like information technology costs and human resources costs? Does our model leave us satisfied with our gross margins, profit margins, and other such figures?

Organizations should be consistently reviewing all aspects of their business model, looking for areas that are weak and need to be overhauled. By weak, we mean out of date, too costly, too slow, or not flexible. In which areas of the business model are you at parity? In those areas, are there any bright ideas on how to achieve a competitive advantage?

TRAP 2: PRIDE

Allowing Your Products to Become Outdated

You may be super proud of your product or service today, but you have to assume that it is going to become inferior to the competition very soon. You need to hustle ad beat your competition to that better mousetrap, and you need to do it over and over.

The amazing thing about success is that it leads to a subconscious entitlement mentality that cause you to believe that you no longer need to do all the dirty work of getting out and studying consumer behavior in details, analyzing different sales approaches, jumping on the latest technology to generate improved products, and everything else that is required to stay ahead. The attitude is often one of believing that you have done all of that and have figured it out, and now things are going to be fine.

Until the early 1970s, typewriters were used to prepare documents. The IBM Selectric model was the standard. Then along came Wang Laboratories' word processor in 1976, providing a completely new approach. It displayed text on a cathode ray tube (CRT) screen that was connected to a central processing unit (CPU). In fact, you could connect many such screens to that CPU in order to handle many different users. Wang's device incorporated virtually every fundamental characteristic of word processors as we know them today, and the phrase word processor rapidly came to refer to CRT-based Wang machines. Then, in the early to mid-1980s, the personal computer emerged. Wang saw it coming but made no attempt to modify its software for a personal computer. PC-based word processors like WordPerfect and Microsoft Word became the rage, and Wang died. Wang fell into the trap of not updating its products, even though it basically invented the word processor industry.

We saw this behavior very clearly with the General Motors example. Its cars, while highly distinctive back in the 1970s, were allowed over time to look more and more alike, and the excitement factor for the customer disappeared.

TRAP 3: BOREDOM

Clinging to Your Once-Successful Branding after It Becomes Stale and Dull

Constantly achieving uniquencss and distinctiveness for a brand and also keeping it fresh and contemporary is hard work. Once a brand achieves some success, the tendency is to sit back and pat yourself on the back, allowing your brand to become dull and ordinary.

The Plymouth automobile was introduced by Chrysler for the 1928 model year as a direct competitor to Ford and Chevrolet. It was a sturdy and durable car that attracted a legion of loyal owners. Plymouth became one of the low-priced three from Detroit and was usually number three in sales, just behind Ford and Chevrolet. For almost two decades, Plymouth sold almost 750,000 cars per year and had a solid brand reputation in the low price range of being reliable but having a bit more flair than Chevrolet or Ford. Older readers may remember the 1957 Plymouth with the huge fins, as well as its Road Runner (beep beep!) model. Plymouth had a very clear brand positioning.

In the 1960s, the Plymouth brand began to lose its uniqueness. Chrysler decided to reposition the Dodge, reducing its price so that it was quite close to Plymouth's. Chrysler came out with low-priced compact and intermediate-size models under both the Plymouth trademark and the Dodge trademark. By 1982, Dodge, was outselling Plymouth. Throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s, Plymouth offered nothing unique. Sales continued to decline, while Dodge was quite healthy. In 1999 Chrysler announced that the Plymouth brand would be discontinued. The lesson is simple: when you allow brands to get stale, they die.

TRAP 4: COMPLEXITY

Ignoring Your Business Processes as They Become Cumbersome and Complicated

Successful organizations often reward themselves by adding more and more people and allowing processes to become fragmented and nonstandardized. This is often done under banner of  refining the management of the business. It is also caused by business units and subsidiaries seeking more autonomy, which leads them to develop their own processes and staff resources. Before you know it, getting any kind of change made is very complicated.

Over and over again you read stories about organizations experiencing weak financial results, then finally coming to grips with the problem, laying off thousands of people and simplifying the organization.

We saw in our Toyota case study how aggressive that company is at constantly improving each and every process. Keeping that mindset of constant improvement is very difficult. Success usually leads to a decrease in the intensity with which you tackle such challenges. Also, success leads to a belief that since we are doing so well, we probably need to reward the people in the organization who are asking for their own building and lots of extra people to get them to the next level. Importunely, all those extra costs often lead to bloated processes and further fragmentation of how work gets done.

TRAP 5: BLOAT

Rationalizing Your Loss of Speed and Agility

Successful organisations and individuals tend to crate complexity. They hire a lot of extra people, since clearly things are going well, and those people find things to do, often creating layers of bureaucracy, duplicating capabilities that already exist in the organization, and making it very hard to react quickly to change.

Getting an organization to constantly think about retaining simplicity and flexibility is not easy. The account given in the previous chapter of Toyota's Global Body Line is a good example of doing it right. Toyota thought about agility ahead of time, and when it came time to build a brand-new car, such as the Prius, it didn't have to build a new plant or a new line. This enabled Toyota to get to market fast and save tens of millions of dollars compared with traditional approaches.

TRAP 6: MEDIOCRITY

Condoning Poor Performance and Letting Your Star Employees Languish

When organizations are successful, they have a tendency to stop doing the hard things, and dealing with poor performance is a really hard thing. It also becomes hard to move new people into existing jobs, because there is the burden of getting the new person up to speed and the perception that you are losing valuable expertise. Also, the really strong performers and to get ignored. Consequently, what happens in many successful organizations is that people are left in their jobs too long and poor performance is not dealt with as crisply as it should be. Unfortunately, this also leads to strong players not being constantly challenged.

Successful organizations are especially vulnerable to this trap, since companies that achieve success often have high morale and pride. And who wants to spoil the fun by dealing with the tough personnel issues, which is an onerous task for most managers? Any excuse to put it aside will be embraced.

TRAP 7: LETHARGY

Getting Lulled into a Culture of Comfort, Casualness, and Confidence

Success, and the resulting tendency to become complacent, often leads organizations and individuals to believe that they are very talented, have figured things out, have the answers to all the questions, and no longer need to get their hands dirty in the trenches. They lose their sense of urgency   the feeling that trouble might be just around the corner.

Considering our case studies on GM and Toyota, the contrast between their cultures is really striking. GM seems to exude pride  and an attitude of "we are the real pro in the industry," while Toyota has a more humble personality that is all about constant improvement.

The leader of a group really sets the tone on this cultural complacency issue. The tendency is to become very proud of your success and protective of the approaches that got you there. It is those very tendencies that lead to an insular, confidence culture that makes people believe that they are on the wining team, while in reality, the world is probably passing them by.

TRAP 8: TIMIDITY

Not Confronting Turf Wars, Infighting, and Obstructionists

Success often leads to the hiring of too many people and the fragmentation of the organization. Business units and subsidiaries work hard to be as independent as possible, often creating groups that duplicate central resources. Staff groups fragment as similar groups emerge in the different business units. Before long, turf wars and infighting emerge, as who is responsible for what becomes vague.

Even worse, the culture gets very insular, with an excessive focus on things like who got promoted, why am I not getting rewarded properly, and a ton of other petty issues that sap the energy of the organization.

Another source of turf wars and infighting is lack of a clear direction for the organization and slow decision making on critical issues. When these kinds of management deficiencies occur, people are left to drift and end up pulling in different directions. That often leads to tremendous amounts of wasted time as groups argue to have it their way.

TRAP 9: CONFUSION

Unwittingly Providing Schizopherenic Communications

When an organization is success or stable, its managers often fall into the trap of not making it clear where the organization is going from there. Sometimes this is because they don't know, but they don't admit that, and they don't try to get the company's direction resolved. They do everything they can to keep all option open, with no clear effort to get decisions made and a plan developed. Such behaviors lead to speculation by the troops, based on comments that they pick up over time. Often those comments are offhand remarks that the leaders have not thought through. Or the troops hear conflicting statements coming form a variety of folks in leadership positions in the organization.

When employees receive confusing and conflicting messages and don't have a clear picture of where the organization is gong or whether progress is being made, they feel vulnerable and get very protective of their current activities. In late 1991, IBM's CEO,John Akes, announced that in the future, IBM would look more like a holding company and that "clearly it's not to IBM's advantage to be 100 per cent owners of each of IBM's product lines."

During the next 12 months, everybody was trying to figure out what he meant. And IBM made no attempt to start publishing separate financial information by product line in preparation for possible spin-offs. IBM also ignored Wall Street's suggestion that it create separate financial entries, with their own stock exchange symbols, for the products that were to be spun off. Employees and investors were confused. The IBM board of directors finally ended the drama in early 1993, announcing that Akers was leaving and a new CEO would be hired quickly. From 1987 to 1993, IBM shareholders lost $77 billion of market value.

Communications from the head of the organization, be it a small group or an IBM, are critical. People want to know where they are headed and how things are going. When the words and actions don't match, confusion reigns.

In the remaining parts of this book, I will discuss these traps in detail. In each part, I will give detailed examples of companies and individuals that in some cases have been hurt and in other cases have avoided these problems. My objective in each part is to provide specific actions that people can take to avoid the particular trap, or to rid themselves of the problem.

(From: Seduced by Success by Robert J Herbold. (http://in.rediff.com/money/2007/sep/25bspec.htm)

Copyright 2007 by Robert Herbold.  Price: Rs 495. Reprinted by permission of Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Company Limited. All rights reserved.

Robert J Herbold was hired by Bill Gates to be chief operating officer of Microsoft Corporation. During his seven years as COO of 1994 to 2001, Microsoft experienced a four-fold increase in revenue and a seven-fold increase in profits.)

Stagnating at work? A mentor could help

Sheetal Nair thought she was doing pretty well for a couple of years in her role as an assistant manager in a media house. However, when she failed to make it to the promotion list in her annual appraisal for the second time, she realised she was merely going around in circles rather than progressing in a linear fashion.

"It dawned on me that I needed to understand what exactly was missing and what I should do to be visible to the management. I desperately needed someone senior and established to help me look for a new direction. I am glad we had a really supportive GM who agreed to help me understand my potential and needs that will get me closer to a promotion. I now meet her at least once a month to discuss my course of action."

Well, Sheetal is fortunate that she understood help was required and took timely corrective steps for charting her successful future. What about you?

Mentor? Who?
Interestingly, the concept of mentoring stems from Greek mythology. Mentor was Odysseus's friend and teacher to his son Telemachus. In Homer's Odyssey, Athena, the goddess, assumed the form of Mentor to proffer advice to Odysseus and Telemachus. Since then, the word Mentor has become synonymous with someone who is a wise advisor.

Do you recall any body who has helped you grow in your career? Someone who was the guiding light and cared about your growth and development? Whom you could depend on for good advice? Well, most probably, he/she was playing the role of your mentor. Mentors are usually experts in their field and are enthusiastic about helping others develop their skills and competencies. They are respected, committed seniors who can act as counselors at work or elsewhere. 

Look around your office. Do you see someone successful, someone you respect for their experience and ethics? Would you like to mirror his/her behaviour? Do you like the manner in which he/she conducts himself/herself as a person or professionally? He/she could be your future mentor!

So, what is mentoring?
"Mentoring is a process of a building mutually beneficial partnership to help develop the skills, behaviour and insights to reach the partner's goals, wherein a mentor has no stake in the outcome."

Mentoring is intended to influence you from within, as a person. Mentoring is not about supervising you for a task or coaching you short term for a pending project. It is about working with you on your attitude, potential, beliefs and providing you with a direction in life, either personally or professionally.

Do you need mentoring?
Think you too need a mentor to help you develop? For starters, ask yourself why you feel the need for a senior's help and guidance in helping you find direction.

Some of the most common reasons why people seek out mentors could be a random mix of any of the following.  

• You feel lost at work and cannot figure out the path to a successful career.
• You are low on self-esteem and need some non-judgmental support.
• A role model can facilitate achieving knowledge and professional competence from someone who is already up there and understands what is required to crack it to the top. 
• Due to their experience, mentors can help identify your latent talents.
• Mentoring can provide general direction to your efforts for your future growth.
• If you are lucky, your mentor may even open some doors for you, though this is strictly not a pre-requisite of mentoring.

How can your organisation benefit from mentoring programmes?
Most organisations use mentoring to make the workplace more productive and employee-friendly. It also helps people connect with each other and form productive relationships at work. Mentoring has also been helpful in increasing employee engagement and bringing down attrition rates.  

"We decided to launch the mentoring programme at Lionbridge to facilitate organisational growth and help both mentors and mentees achieve professional and personal growth as well," says Deepak Deshpande, Head HR, Lionbridge Technologies Inc. "The programme has helped us speed up the development of future leaders and make people more capable and motivated to manage their own career advancement."

Can I be mentored?
Before you go about trying to gain the benefits mentoring can provide, you need to be willing to:

~ Try harder to identify your goals and expectations 
~ Learn and grow with definite career goals
~ Commit to your chosen career and then work on your development/opportunity areas
~ Explore various options to your problems and take risks
~ Listen to feedback with an open mind
~ Maintain confidentiality about your mentor's strategies
~ Respect your mentor's experience and use it for your progress
~ Track you progress continuously and strive hard

All of you out there who want to get into a mentoring relationship to gain definite focus and help progress and grow in your career, fasten your seat belts. Mentoring can help you in your flight to the success zone! To be effective however, you need to be totally committed to the mentoring relationship. Focus on creating effective, honest communication with your mentor. Think about your objectives and goals and remember to track your progress in life.

Determine your learning pattern and a suitable mentor who understands your needs to accelerate your growth trajectory in life and get blazing on the path to success!

(http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2007/oct/01career.htm)