Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
– Marianne Williamson

I’ve spent a great amount of time reflecting on one’s role in this world. There are people who would disagree and say we have no singular purpose to existing – but I can’t accept that. I can’t accept that I am useless that nothing I do has an effect. Because if I did then that would also mean that I have no power and no effect on things.

What do you think?

Excellently Effective

I am a reformed perfectionist.

There was a time…not so long ago that I would labor over…well everything. I am pretty sure it’s a direct result of ‘academic excellence’ and Magis being drilled into me from my days in Assumption and later Ateneo. That added to the ideals of hard work, taking the road less travelled, if it’s not difficult it’s not worth it, and all those similar b******t.

Three years ago, I realized how terribly dangerous this ‘excellence’ mindset could be…

I would wake up at 8am and the first thing I would do is open my computer and check email (mind you, I hadn’t even stretched my legs at this point)…and at the end of the day, the last thing I’d do was check my email again. I wasn’t just being an emailholic but really, my drive to get things done excellently was killing me.

I began to envy, my smart but lazy counterparts and I started to wonder. Why and how could they doing less work accomplish so much and in certain cases even more than I did?

Whatever we do we should do excellently effective. We shouldn’t kill ourselves making every single detail perfect but perfecting the details that matter. It means finding ways to produce things of quality quickly and in a quantity that is significant.

The good news is that there are many tools and techniques to maintain a high level of quality but with reduced efforts – the key is finding which ones work for you. Below are just some of the things I use/employ to help me.

Drop me a note about what’s going on with you and let’s see how we can optimize things!

 

Do you have what it takes?

“Anong marerecommend mo?”  I asked Hector the server assigned to my table at one of those posh restaurants in Greenbelt. I was thirsty and early for my meeting and clueless on what to order. Hector’s response to my question and the ensuing conversation was refreshing. Hector after telling me that the Cooler Cucumber was his personal favorite offered to replace the drink if I didn’t like it. One word came to mind – GUTS.

It takes guts to make bold promises.
It takes guts to assume responsibility.
It takes guts to deliver something memorable.

ULTIMATELY
It takes guts to be successful.

Thankfully when my drink came it was good…a few minutes later Hector dropped by my table and asked if I liked it. It takes guts to be accountable. If I hated the drink, then he’d have to replace it.

To add awesomeness to that, when the guys I had my meeting with arrived they asked a lady server what she’d recommend from the same section of the drinks list…she touted that the best sellers were so and so and so (not the Cooler Cucumber). It’s an added bonus that the guy wasn’t feeding me a line.

It takes guts to put yourself out there:
Guts to accept that there are always two possibilities.

Sincerity Sells

The other night, I came across an old blog post of Seth Godin which puts into perspective why people don’t listen… as in really listen. The people who came before you Maybe I’m not listening to your pitch because the …

When People Miss the Obvious

A merry-go-round doesn’t go round without the operator, the maintenance guy, the electrician, the power plant staff, etc. For everything and everything you have experienced, currently experience and will experience in the future, there are people making it happen. Someone somewhere did something so that you can experience what you are currently experiencing.

Source: TibetanBuddhistAltar.org

Nothing ‘just’ happens. There is always an action, preceded by a decision, which results in the effect-whatever is happening. So many people forget that or get so used to the way things are that they are no longer conscious of this. Things don’t just happen out of nothing. A question is posed for someone to respond. Menus are made available for a dish to be chosen. These things are ‘invisible’ to the client, the more invisible it is the better the client experience.

The challenge with this ‘invisibility’ is when actors-employees and staff-don’t see it too! Like clients, they come to expect that things will ‘just happen’ with minimal action on their part. These things that should be ‘obvious’ are so well camouflaged that even team members can forget that they have a hand in it. That without their decision or action, mistakes would happen and the invisible would be made visible in a bad way. So while it’s obvious or common sense to you, it’s not to others.  I’ll say it again, THINGS DON’T JUST HAPPEN!

It thus falls to the leaders in the organization to make visible to team members what is invisible (and should remain invisible) for the client. How do you do that?

1. Don’t assume what is known just because your team members have done things before, been in the company for so long, are really great at their job, etc. Ask and ask again. Make sure it’s clear to every single member of the team, every single time.

2. Don’t take details for granted. Every aspect of the customer experience matters. EVERY SINGLE THING. You and your team have to be specific, go down to the smallest and tiniest detail and make sure it gets done right every single time. It only takes one loose thread for a tapestry to unravel.

3. Don’t dictate the experience. If you simply tell your team what you want to happen they’ll make a list of tasks to accomplish and miss the reason why these tiny tasks matter. It later becomes easy to short-cut things and leave this out. Disparate details are often forgotten…but crucial highly important ones-rarely. A better way is for the person himself to visualize the experience and make note of the disparity between the visualization and the present.

4. Do ask questions. Make them think for it. Have them describe and articulate the experience themselves-connect their task to those of the team. You can do this by asking questions: What would be the ideal experience? How would it go? What would it feel like? Follow numbers 1-3 – otherwise your questions will be rhetoric or worse, you’ll just answer them yourself.

5. Do be patient. You’re introducing a new way of thinking and prioritizing to your team. It might take a while for them to get the hang of it – but once they do then they’ll perform better and more independently. They will also have confidence in making decisions.

6. Do encourage scenarios. There’s always something that doesn’t happen according to plan-when on the spot decisions have to be made. To those with experience and confidence, the obvious answer comes by easily but for those with less – the options can be overwhelming. What-if scenarios help mentally plan you for when things go wrong. This way you’ll have a schema you can fall back on if something does happen.

The great benefit of this is that clearly articulating and visualizing the ideal experience is 90% determining the necessary action points, classifying it’s importance as well as prepare for contingencies. All that’s left is to jot down tasks and things to do next.

So before you get frustrated about what’s so ‘obvious’ think again…it’s probably just obvious to you.

I’d love to hear if this works for you! Email me: blogsbyguita@gmail.com

Be More in 2014

In a meeting today with Rich Quin, President of Cloudware, a cloud computing tech company, Rich relayed a quote by Einstein that goes like this: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” …

LearningOpp: TEDxADMU

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Freelancers in the Philippines

Curious about Freelancing? Take a peek into the lives of two young freelancers – listen to their stories about transitioning from full time employment to freelance, it’s challenges and how they’ve overcome it.  Get insights from veteran  and self-made professionals seeking to bring freelancing to the next level.

Guita T. Gopalan
Let’s Make Great Things Happen!

                

Take The Initiative

The other day a friend shared his work frustrations with me… His boss was pushing him to take more initiative. In response, he started taking on more work himself. Now he was constantly working – over sa over time. Work was consuming more and more of his evenings and even his weekends. Obviously he wasn’t happy about it.

In writing this  post… I first wanted to check the definition of initiative… and here’s what I found.

Initiative is closely related to the word ‘initiate’ – to start, as in definition #2 in the image above. We understand initiative as ‘doing something before someone else does.’ This is correct (in fact I think this is the prevailing definition of initiative)…but it is not complete.  Having initiative (the valuable kind, and not the kind that is bira lang ng bira) results from a thought process, just as defined in the image above as #1 – THE ABILITY TO ASSESS AND INITIATE THINGS INDEPENDENTLY. 

So apparently nakatsamba ako… at one point in my conversation with my friend, I told him: “Taking initiative is not simply about taking on more work or accomplishing more tasks… it’s about thinking differently.” 

As an employee myself… I view initiative as being able to think like my boss and respond to situations, say things and take actions in the same manner as my boss would. It means I don’t have to go to him and ask him whether I should do A, B, C, D or E. It means that for most things I won’t even have to go to him to ask whether I should go ahead with A or not – I don’t need him to validate what I know I should do. I guess this is where definition #1 comes in. The ‘ability to assess’ is in the framework of my boss’ thinking process, principles and values. While ‘independently’ refers to being able to push through with things even without my boss.

Am I the golden girl always getting things right? HELL NO! I’ve been chastised, interrogated err questioned, spoken to loudly aka shouted at, and asked the dreaded question… Paano mo naisip yun? about the things I’ve done and the decisions I’ve made.

But in my time as a boss… I value my team members’ initiative. I appreciate it when they are able to handle things on their own without me having to micro-manage them. Seeing them innovating, trying new things out, experimenting, making recommendations – thinking beyond how I think to make our work better – that makes me excited! Knowing that my team members making conscious and well-thought out decisions that they are accountable for makes me proud. Sometimes the outcome will be great, sometimes it’ll be an embarrassing flop — but the fact that they took initiative works in their favor in the long run…

Now… if this explanation of ‘initiative’ doesn’t work… then… I suggest you take initiative (pun intended) and ask your boss to clearly define what he/she means by ‘INITIATIVE’. What is he/she looking for exactly. 🙂

 

Guita T. Gopalan
Let’s Make Great Things Happen!