About Leaders

Nuggets from the book "Beyond Auditing"

G Narayanaswamy, (92 Years) a protégé of former Madras presidency Chief Minister C Rajagopalachari, also served as his auditor, passed away on the 23rd August 2019. G.Narayanaswamy is related to S Gurumurthy, well-known auditor and editor of Thuglak magazine. He authored ‘Beyond Auditing’, an autobiography.

Some nuggets from his book:

•       Affection has nothing to do with financial assistance.

•       Ones ethical character is as valuable for success in a profession as one’s competence and intelligence.

•       Professional assignment should not be accepted without knowing the antecedents of the client.

•       Satisfied clients become your best Public Relations Officer.

•       Perception of competence has two components: the speed with which an assignment is completed; and perfection.

•       Success is attributed to well-prepared homework, expeditious disposals and also earnestness

•       Success also depends on your patience, presenting facts in a persuasive and pleasant manner and not to get into an argument.

•       The respect that a professional or any individual commands would ultimately depend upon his usefulness to others while knowledge could be improved, intelligence must be applied in all cases.

•       Understand what hospitability is; helping others would give greater happiness; financing is not a desirable occupation; give utmost consideration to professional opinion; be humble when strong; finally ego does not take you anywhere.

•       Understand the difference between a debate and discussion. The debate is a discourse where 2 or more people participate to prove that one’s view is right and another wrong (it is 2-2). In the case of a discussion, one supplement and improves the ideas of others (it is 2+2).

…….Compiled by @ps., August 2019

About Leaders accepting Rakshas

About leadership priorities

Leadership lessons of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson:

·         Focus; “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

·         Simplify; “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

·         Take responsibility end to end.

·         When behind, leap frog; “If we don’t cannibalize ourselves, someone else will.

·        Put products before profits; “Don’t compromise, focus on making the product great and the profits will follow”

·         Don’t be a slave to focus groups; “Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

·       Intuition is a very powerful thing – more powerful than intellect; “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do; they use their intuition instead.’

·         Bend reality; “Don’t be afraid, get your mind around it, you can do it.”

·         Impute; “People do judge a book by its cover”.

·      Push for perfection: “A great carpenter isn’t going to use a lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.”

·        Tolerate only ‘A’ players; “When you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them; by expecting them to do great things , you can get them to do great things.

·       Engage face to face; “I hate the way people use the slide presentation instead of thinking, people would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I want them to engage, to hash things out at a table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint.’

·      Know both the big picture and the details; “Some Ceo’s are great at vision, others are managers who know that God is in the details.”

·         Combine the humanities and the sciences; Connect humanities to the sciences; creativity to technology; arts to engineering.

·    Stay hungry and stay foolish; in every aspect of life Jobs behavior reflected the contradictions, confluence and eventual synthesis of all the varying strands. “Think different” “While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Source:  HBR South Asia 1 January, 2012

Words of wisdom.....Stephen R Covey

Stephen Richards Covey words of wisdom:

Live by principles or natural laws rather than going along with today’s culture of quick fix. Timeless principles are fairness, honesty, kindness, respect, service, integrity and contribution.

Body is a natural system. It is governed by natural law. No amount of positive mental attitude could get around the literal limits of muscle conditioning.

Values are social norms – they are personal, emotional, subjective and arguable. Principles are impersonal factual, objective and self-evident. Consequences are governed by principles and behavior is governed by values; therefore value principles.

There is a “law of harvest” that governs character, all human greatness and all human relationships. It stands contrast to our culture of quick –fix, victimism and blame.

Common sense is not common practice.

You cannot think or live independently in an interdependent world.

We are a product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. 

Hitler’s vision, discipline and passion was driven by ego. Gandhi’s vision, discipline and passion was driven by conscience.

Discipline is will power embodied.

Online the disciplined are truly free. Undisciplined are slaves to mood, appetites and perversion.

Form the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.

Leadership is communicating peoples worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.

Philosophy of influence is called: ethos: means your ethical nature, your personal credibility, the amount of trust or confidence others have in your integrity and competency. Pathos is empathy; Logos basically stands for logic.

Relish the “little” assignment or “chore” that no one else wants! Seek it out! It’s a license for self empowerment whether it is the redesign of a form or planning a weekend client retreat—you can turn it into something grand and glorious and wows.

90% of all leadership failure is character failures 

In an interview for a medical school a person asked whom e would prefer: an honest surgeon who was incompetent, or a competent surgeon who was dishonest. He reflected and said: “It all depends on the issue. If I needed the surgery I ‘d go for the competent person. If is was a question of whether to have the surgery or not, I would go for he honest one.” 

Character and competence makes a good leader.

Source: The 8thHabit, Stephen R Covey, Free Press New York 2001

On Leadership and Decision making:

Wisdom from T V Mohandas Pai:

On Leadership and Decision making:

·         Every little decision has big consequences and many more end in failures than those that hit the mark.

·         The fear of erring or being accused of wrong decision makes most leaders and organizations base their decisions on precedent. Doing the right thing requires complete awareness and honesty.

·         Self awareness allows a leader to make the best decisions for the organization and not just for oneself. It also makes the leader more open to contrarian inputs and gives the decisions the flavor of consensus. Subordinates lend to tell the leader what one wants to hear and that leads to poor decisions that hurt the organization.

·         An open culture which encourages different views is essential to make the right decisions

·         Leaders like to establish homogeneity in the organization through conformity.

·         In uncertain conditions with too many variables the decision makers would do better by erring on the side of experimentation instead of experience. 

·         Committees and long meetings are the biggest enemies of fast and effective decisions-making. While consultations and consensus are vital for the quality of decisions too often meetings tend to degenerate into durbars for the bosses.

·         To bring speed and quality to decision making, it is necessary to flatten the hierarchy and even push the decision making authority to those who perform the task and roles.

·         Technology allows instant consultation and collaboration and allows automation of routine and repetitive decision. Data can be analyzed by algorithms and trained to adapt to any changes in business events and adjust decisions accordingly.

·         Machines validate and predict business events but humans must make the strategic judgments and bear the final responsibility. 

·         The central role of decisions is to upgrade the present to a better future.

·         Decisions involve a paradox of preventing risks and taking risk at the same time.

·         Decisions separate the leader from the herd.

Source: Indian Management, August 2018