Leadership Wisdom

Leadership lessons from Capt. J S Verma to Capt. Gopinath:

“In everything that you do, you want to earn respect of your men, you have to be professionally better than them. You have to stretch yourself more than them. You cannot spare yourself. Do not spare your men but more importantly do not spare yourself. If you ask them to work 6 hours you must work 8 hours. If you ask them to walk 10 miles you must walk twenty. If you tell them to do without food you must go without food and water. Whatever you do, you must ensure that you are better than them in the quantum of your effort and competence. Whatever you do, you must put them before you. Putting them before you will always show you the way, whether you are in the army or in civilian life, putting your men before you will always lead the way.”

Source: Simply Fly.

Entrepreneur Definition

An entrepreneur is often defined as one who starts his own new and small business…..But not every new small business is entrepreneurial or represents entrepreneurship…..A true entrepreneur is one who creates wealth where it did not exist earlier by creating a new market and a new customer. They create something new, something different; they change and transmute (change in form nature or substance) values; and on a size and scale that will impact society….Peter Drucker

Different types of Thinking

Human brain consists of two different ways of thinking – 

System 1 and System 2.

System 1 is fast, automatic, based on impressions, is quick to make associations between events, cannot be switched off and requires little effort or energy to operate. It operates in normal times. System 1 simplifies or assumes ‘what you see is all there is‘(WYSIATI). It is open to cognitive bias – systemic tendencies to deviate from rational calculations.

The biases are:

1) Confirmation Bias: Pick up information that fits into their existing experiences and pay less attention to the contrary information available.

2) Sunk Cost Bias: Administrators often expend effort, time and resources in an Endeavour. Even after all evidences shows that the program is giving astray and results are unlikely to be achieved, they will continue with the earlier course of action.

3. Anchor and insufficient adjustment bias: Administrators take the initial position and rest their decision on this stand and fail to move away from the first point of view.

System 2 is slow, deliberate and requires effort to make it operate; it is lazy and tires easily and prefers to accept what System 1 tells. 

“The view of the man at the bottom of the hierarchy who writes the first note on a file is all important in most instances.” Paul Appleby

Administrators get into adverse situation mainly due to their reliance on System 1. System 1 operated on Heuristics – automatic assumptions based on experiences without having thought through them carefully. System 2 requires effort evaluating those heuristics; thinking slow requires effort. Administrators are prone to think fast or take the path of least resistance.

“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.”

Think “reactively” to accomplish routine tasks. When dealing with complicated task containing value conflicts, engage in “reflective” thinking.

Source: Sameer Sharma, “Using behavior economics will help officers take better decisions.” Economic times, 9 January, 2018

Wisdom from Captain Gopinath:

·         One has to be proactive and steer the course to make things happen.

         When you have an iron will and an indomitable spirit, the God’s them self join in the combat and the universe conspires to help you succeed.

·   Characteristic of Leadership depends on your willingness to bring in people smarter than yourself

·      Great Leadership requires great humility and the vision to look beyond one’s own role and create value and sustainability without arrogance.

·    Your business will succeed only when you can’t pay your rent, you can’t pay salaries, you can’t buy your wife a saree, and you can’t pay your children’s school fees. Then you will learn to innovate. You will be forced to improve.

   Nothing breeds invention like necessity. Necessities will ensure you do not become complacent. You will be unable to sleep because your business may go bankrupt. This is how your business will succeed. Any other way of setting up a venture is a receipt of disaster.

·         When you decide that you won’t give up till it happens, then it happens
.

·        Happiness is a mirage if you look at it as a destination to arrive at. If you take joy in the everyday things of life, you will never need to embark on a journey towards an elusive destination. If work is your joy, you never need to toil at all in your life. Happiness is no pinnacle to attain. It doesn’t exist as a destination and is meaningful only as a journey.

·       What sees us through difficult situation in life is not resources but the ability to be resourceful.

·         If something is not ecologically sound, it is not economically viable.

·      Most jobs in large cities have become very much like the toil of Sisyphus. People do no love what they do, but do it nonetheless for the money it brings. The tragedy is …..…that worker has no idea of the value they bring in.

·         You need not possess a lot to be able to give and share.

·     If faced with something unfair don’t sit back and moan and wallow in melancholy; revolt and fight against it.

·    Look beyond the obvious ‘black’ and ‘white’ of life and judge people and situations in the fail light of reason and tolerance.

·       A vision is an ideal. If you have reached it you may have reached a goal but a vision is something that drives you because it is almost impossible to achieve. It is something virtual. 

·        An entrepreneur must not only create a new product but fundamentally alter the very behavior of consumers; create societal change.

·        When people say it cannot be done, don’t accept it easily but get into the habit of checking the rule book yourself.

·        Lack of imagination was perhaps the only limiting factor in any new enterprise or experiment.

·        Competition can only kill business when the business is inefficient. Competition helps to improve quality and brings down prices and is therefore good for the consumers.

·         He who walks stumbles.

·         Beyond a point one gives oneself over to the tide of destiny.

Source: https://harpercollins.co.in/book/simply-fly-a-deccan-odyssey/

Quote

It's in the nature of stock markets to go way down from time to time. There's no system to avoid bad markets. You can't do it unless you try to time the market, which is a seriously dumb thing to do. Conservative investing with steady savings without expecting miracles is the way to go.

....Charlie Munger