Don't worry ... Be crappy

Recently i gave a short speech on innovation which i believe PASSION is the first article of faith in INNOVATION. And innovation is an equation that will never complete without having Apple culture being mentioned.

But before i tread carefully with my words to inspire about innovation with the DREAM of heading to our office, switching on our laptop, starting with a clean sheet of paper, the hours ahead of us to grow - to do something better, to develop our ideas further and t0 improve our capabilities,BUT  i'm deeply troubled with the way we live with.

Somehow it doesn't often feel like that, Most of us in most businessess heading straight for new coffee machine, then to our email-laden inboxes, followed by a sequence of hours-long review meeting or click open our hundred-page documents.

We have little to think. We spend most of our business lives with our heads down. Doing what we did,reviewing what we have done, doing more of what we have always done. Endless pursuit for more information,more details analysis, faster reporting and get caught is spreadsheet trap.

This lead to quote of what Edward De Bono said, "Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see."

It's time for ReTHINK...Be Different.

Let me get to the irrestible tendecy of having innovation and Apple's founder Steve job next to each other to be explained.

Apple is on a roll and we want to know how Steve Jobs does it. The Steve Jobs way is, in a word, passion. 

Passion drives his perseverance and momentum through setbacks. 
Passion obliges his attention to detail. 
Passion necessitates his intense focus. 
Passion fuels his outbursts. 
Passion compels him to encourage those around him. 
Passion urges him to compete with himself. 
Passion informs his decisions. 

I recounts of an articles that i read on what Steve Jobs said .

“I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you’re really passionate about.” He believes that “about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. 

You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don’t blame them. It’s really tough and it consumes your life.” 

You have to be burning with “an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right.” If you’re not passionate from the start, you’ll never stick it out."

And this is some of the rudimentary ideas that i shared during my presentation.

 

I leave you this evening with following words.Words to inspire you to have courage to follow your passion even if you have to stray slightly off the beaten path.

“Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are.”

Read More

Our Thought

Psychologists estimate that, on average, we have asmany as sixty thousand thoughts in a typical day. If we sleep six to eight hours a day, then we are having about on thought each second.
When we started paying attention to my thoughts, I found my head filled with an endless dialogue. I was surprised to discover that I wasn’t having sixty thousand new and useful thoughts.

Instead, I was repeating a series of unproductive fight, flight, and freeze thoughts—doubts about myself, doubts about my abilities, imagining upcoming scenarios with difficult people and difficult situations, criticizing and judging myself and others, and analyzing everyone and everything (and not necessarily in a positive way).

If everything we say and do first begins in thought, I wondered how I was able to accomplish anything of significance to me with all that chatter.

when we manage our thoughts and stay in the moment, we release many of those sixty thousand daily thoughts. We create the space for powerful thoughts to come through.

Creative ideas emerge when our heads are clear, when we give our minds a rest, and when we do what we love to do. These creative ideas result in great decisions. And we don’t waste time, energy, or money. We focus on what is significant.

Read More

ReTHINK : Decision Making by Anthony Robbins

Napoleon Bonaparte Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

---

Read More

The 7 Hidden Reasons Why Employees Leave a Company...

Employees don't leave a company, they leave the managers..

About the author of The 7 Hidden Reaons Why Employees Leave a Company

Leigh Branham is the Founder/Principal of consulting firm Keeping the People Inc. and is an author, speaker and consultant on workplace best practices. He has been widely quoted in the media including Fortune, Business Week and The Associated Press as an expert on employee retention.

As we know, when exiting employees are asked, ‘‘Why are you leaving?’’ most are not inclined to tell the whole truth. Rather than risk burning a bridge with the former manager whose references they might need, they’ll just write down ‘‘better opportunity’’ or ‘‘higher pay.’’ Why would they want to go into the unpleasant truth about how they never got any feedback or recognition from the boss, or how they were passed over for promotion?


So, it is no wonder that, according to one survey, 89 percent of managers said they believe that employees leave and stay mostly for the money. Yet, my own research, along with Saratoga Institute’s surveys of almost 20,000 workers from eighteen industries,2 and the research of dozens of other studies, reveal that actually 80 to 90 percent of employees leave for reasons related NOT to money, but to the job, the manager, the culture, or the work environment (Figure 1-1). These internal reasons (also known as ‘‘push’’ factors, as opposed to ‘‘pull’’ factors, such as a better-paying outside opportunity) are issues within the power of the organization and the manager to control and change.


Employee turnover is not an event — it is a process of disengagement that can take days, weeks, months or even years until the actual decision to leave occurs. There are several sequential and predictable steps that can unfold in the employee’s journey from disengagement to departure. These are:


● Question the decision to accept the job.
● Think seriously about quitting.
● Try to change things.
● Resolve to quit.
● Consider the cost of quitting.
● Passively seek another job.
● Prepare to actively seek.
● Actively seek.
● Get new job offer.
● Quit to accept new job, quit without a job, or stay and disengage.

About 90 percent of departing employees leave because of issues with their "job, manager, culture or work environment," Leigh Branham reports, yet nearly 90 percent of managers believe that "employees leave and stay mostly for the money."


One appendix summarizes all the specific practices Branham suggests throughout the book, and another provides guidelines for successful exit interviews and turnover analysis.
So why do people really leave?

• There's not enough feedback or coaching. The root problems are managers' inattention to people they supervise, irregular or nonexistent feedback, criticism instead of praise, and other indicators that feedback isn't valued or valuable. Practices to improve coaching and feedback include focusing it on new hires, setting up buddy or mentor programs with experienced employees, and holding managers accountable for feedback.
•  Employees feel "devalued and unrecognized." Managers, fearing charges of favoritism or not knowing enough about an employee's job to judge performance well, may balk at recognizing employees. But a manager should be aware that problems may arise if good employees are overdue for pay increases or are paid the same as poor performers, or if new recruits make more than experienced workers in similar jobs.
•  Loss of trust and confidence in senior leaders. Leaders who don't provide a clear vision and understandable path for execution are at risk. Leaders who are unethical and narcissistic (extremely self-centered) will chase good employees out the door.
• Stress from overwork and work-life imbalance. "Company leaders must determine whether their organization’s culture is unhealthy, or even toxic. When you force workers into choosing between having a life and a career, your organization has a toxic culture," according to Leigh. Hire good people, treat them respectfully, and give them latitude to act like adults.

The answer lies in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and was published in a book called "First Break All The Rules". It came up with this surprising finding:

If you're losing good people, look to their immediate boss.Immediate boss is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization. And he 's the reason why people leave. When people leave they take knowledge,experience and contacts with them, straight to the competition. “So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people - in the form of better pay, better perks and better training - when, in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue.” If you have a turnover problem, look first to your managers. Are they driving people away?

"People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

Mostly manager drives people away?

HR experts say that of all the abuses, employees find humiliation the most intolerable. The first time, an employee may not leave,but a thought has been planted. The second time, that thought gets strengthened. The third time, he looks for another job.When people cannot retort openly in anger, they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and slowing down. By doing only what they are told to do and no more. By omitting to give the boss crucial information. Dev says: "If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get him into trouble. You don 't have your heart and soul in the job."

Any company trying to compete must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee,” Jack Welch of GE once said. Much of a company’s value lies “between the ears of its employees”. If it’s bleeding talent, it’s bleeding value. Unfortunately, many senior executives busy travelling the world, signing new deals and developing a vision for the company, have little idea of what may be going on at home.
That deep within an organization that otherwise does all the right things, one man could be driving its best people away.

Different managers can stress out employees in different ways - by being too controlling, too suspicious,too pushy, too critical, but they forget that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on too long, an employee will quit - often over a trivial issue

Read More

A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position




































Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.


Do what you love. When Steve Jobs was asked to give advice to young entrepreneurs he said, “I think you should get a job as a busboy until you something you’re passionate about it. Have the courage to follow your heart, Jobs advised Stanford students in 2005. “You’ve got to find what you love. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” You cannot create world-changing innovations unless you are truly passionate about moving society forward.

Some point to ponder from ReTHINK

• Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
• There is no greatness without a passion to be great, whether it's the aspiration of an athlete or an artist, a scientist, a parent, or a businessperson. ----Anthony Robbins
• A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
•      “Great dancers aren't great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.
• The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire

ReTHINK

Read More

Myth of Multitask and why your boss is not always right.

Source : Myth of multitasking by Dave Crenshaw

Why you should care about NOT to multitask and prove your boss is wrong !

1. A recent Harvard Business Review post says that multitasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity, increased stress, and a 10% drop in IQ.
2. John Medina, author of Brain Rules and a molecular biologist who specializes in brain development. That is, you make three times more errors on a project when interrupted and it takes you four times longer to complete a task when interrupted.
3. Most of us would not consider smoking marijuana while we work, but recent research has shown that multitasking at work causes a drop in your IQ more than twice that found when smoking marijuana.
4. The IQ drop when multitasking is also equivalent to losing an entire night's sleep.
5. Research shows that the average multitasker loses up to 28% of the workday to interruptions.
6. Josh Waitzkin, a chess and martial arts world champion and author of The Art of Learning wrote that multitasking is equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours—more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana.
7. Don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption

The myth of multitasking and the myth that management still believe in

If you want to ride 2 horses at once, then you should be in circus. Not in corporate management.

Multitasking is an act that conveys a single, crirical idea: to do two things at once is to do neither. When most refer to multitasking, they are really talking about switchtasking. No matter how they do it, switching rapidly between two things is just NOT very efficient or effective.

The great irony of multitasking that its overall aim, getting more done in less time, turns out to be fantasy. The fact is that multitasking slows down our thinking. A brain attempting to perform two tasks simultananeously, going back to and forth stress, exhibit a substantial lag in information processing.

Multitasking-or switchtasking-make us less productive,costs us time and generally leads to the feeling we'll never catch  up.

A weakness of all human beings is trying to do so many things at once-Henry Ford

Background Tasking – Killing 2 Birds With One Stone

Allow me to state few points here. When I speak of multitasking as most people understand it, I am not referring to doing something completely mindless and mundane in the background such as exercising while listening to a CD, eating dinner and watching a show, or having the copy machine operate in the background while you answer emails. For clarity’s sake, I call this “background tasking".

Switchtasking – A Neurological Meltdown

When most people or corporate refer to multitasking they mean simultaneously performing 2 or more things that require mental effort and attention. Examples would include saying we’re spending time with family while were researching stocks online, attempting to listen to a CD and answering email at the same time, or pretending to listen to an employee while we are crunching the numbers. What most people refer to as multitasking, I refer to as “switchtasking.” Why?

Because the truth is we really cannot do two things at the same time—we are only one person with only one brain. Neurologically speaking, it has been proven to be impossible. What we are really doing is switching back and forth between two tasks rapidly, typing here, paying attention there, checking our “crackberry” here, answering voicemail there back and forth back and forth at a high rate.

 Keep this up over a long period of time, and you have deeply ingrained habits that cause stress and anxiety and dropped responsibilities and a myriad of produc ivity & focus problems. It’s little wonder so many people complain of increasingly short attention.In this age, hurry, bustle and agitation is part of our chapters of life- so much so we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to many demands on our time : MULTITASKING.

Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.

In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.” The psychologist who led the study called this new “infomania” a serious threat to workplace productivity.

When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention. People who have achieved great things often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention. When asked about his particular genius,

Isaac Newton responded that if he had made any discoveries, it was “owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.”

Our Focus - where we direct it and how long we keep it there-is one of few things under our control. Isn't it time we stop sabotaging ourself?

ReTHINK !

Multitasking is single best thing to screw up both jobs.

Read More

ReTHINK : Food for thought, The Honda Story

In 1938, while he was still in school, Mr. Honda took everything he owned and invested it in a

little workshop where he began to develop his concept of a piston ring. He wanted to sell his work to

Toyota Corporation, so he labored day and night, up to his elbows in grease, sleeping in the machine shop, always believing he could produce the result. He even pawned his wife's jewelry to stay in business. But when he finally completed the piston rings and presented them to Toyota, he was told they didn't meet Toyota's standards. He was sent back to school for two years, where he heard the derisive laughter of his instructors and fellow students as they talked about how absurd his designs were. But rather than focusing on the pain of the experience, he decided to continue to focus on his goal. Finally, after two more years, Toyota gave Mr. Honda the contract he'd dreamed of. His passion and belief paid off because he had known what he wanted, taken action, noticed what was working, and kept changing his approach until he got what he wanted. Then a new problem arose.

The Japanese government was gearing up for war, and they refused to give him the concrete

that was necessary to build his factory. Did he quit there? No. Did he focus on how unfair this was? Did

it mean to him that his dream had died? Absolutely not. Again, he decided to utilize the experience,

and developed another strategy. He and his team invented a process for creating their own concrete

and then built their factory. During the war, it was bombed twice, destroying major portions of the

manufacturing facility. Honda's response? He immediately rallied his team, and they picked up the

extra gasoline cans that the U.S. fighters had discarded. He called them "gifts from President Truman"

because they provided him with the raw materials he needed for his manufacturing process—materials

that were unavailable at the time in Japan. Finally, after surviving all of this, an earthquake leveled his

factory. Honda decided to sell his piston operation to Toyota.

Here is a man who clearly made strong decisions to succeed. He had a passion for and belief in

what he was doing. He had a great strategy. He took massive action. He kept changing his approach,

but still he'd not produced the results that he was committed to. Yet he decided to persevere.

After the war, a tremendous gasoline shortage hit Japan, and Mr. Honda couldn't even drive his

car to get food for his family. Finally, in desperation, he attached a small motor to his bicycle. The next

thing he knew, his neighbors were asking if he could make one of his "motorized bikes" for them. One

after another, they jumped on the bandwagon until he ran out of motors. He decided to build a plant

that would manufacture motors for his new invention, but unfortunately he didn't have the capital.

As before, he made the decision to find a way no matter what! His solution was to appeal to the

18,000 bicycle shop owners in Japan by writing them each a personal letter. He told them how they

could play a role in revitalizing Japan through the mobility that his invention could provide, and

convinced 5,000 of them to advance the capital he needed. Still, his motorbike sold to only the most

hard-core bicycle fans because it was too big and bulky. So he made one final adjustment, and created

a much lighter, scaled-down version of his motorbike. He christened it "The Super Cub," and it became

an "overnight" success, earning him the Emperor's award. Later, he began to export his motorbikes to

the baby boomers of Europe and the United States, following up in the seventies with the cars that

have become so popular.

Today, the Honda Corporation employs over 100,000 people in both the United States and Japan

and is considered one of the biggest car-making empires in Japan, outselling all but Toyota in the

United States. It succeeds because one man understood the power of a truly committed decision that

is acted upon, no matter what the conditions, on a continuous basis.

Honda certainly knew that sometimes when you make a decision and take action, in the short term it

may look like it's not working.

challenges that we have in our personal lives—like indulging constantly in overeating, drinking, or

smoking, to feeling overwhelmed and giving up on our dreams—come from a short-term focus.

Success and failure are not overnight experiences. It's all the small decisions along the way that cause

people to fail. It's failure to follow up. It's failure to take action. It's failure to persist. It's failure to

manage our mental and emotional states. It's failure to control what we focus on. Conversely, success

is the result of making small decisions: deciding to hold yourself to a higher standard, deciding to

contribute, deciding to feed your mind rather than allowing the environment to control you—these

small decisions create the life experience we call success.In order to succeed, you must have a long-term focus. Most of the

Read More

ReTHINK : 20 Craziest Job Interview Questions

Lynn O'Shaughnessy

The College Solution

Nobody has to tell you that it’s a rough job market. So when you do finagle a job interview, you’ll want to shine.
To get you prepared, here are 20 real job interview questions that such companies as Google, Capital One and Goldman Sachs asked internships candidate. The interview questions were compiled by Glassdoor.com, an online job community that encourages people to anonymously share that inside look at jobs and companies.

20 Craziest Job Interview Questions

Procter & Gamble: Sell me an invisible pen.

Facebook: Twenty five racehorses, no stopwatch, five tracks.  Figure out the top three fastest horses in the fewest number of races.

Citigroup: What is your strategy at table tennis?

Google: You are climbing a staircase. Each time you can either take one step or two. The staircase has n steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb the staircase?

Capital One: How do you evaluate Subway’s five-foot long sub policy?

Gryphon Scientific: How many cocktail umbrellas are there in a given time in the United States?

Enterprise Rent-A-Car: Would you be okay hearing “no” from seven out of 10 customers.

Goldman Sachs: Suppose you had eight identical balls. One of them is slightly heavier and you are given a balance scale. What’s the fewest number of times you have to use the scale to find the heavier ball?

Towers Watson: Estimate how many planes are there in the sky.

Lubin Lawrence: If you could describe Hershey, Godiva and Dove chocolate as people, how would you describe them?

Pottery Barn: If I was a genie and could give you your dream job, what and where would it be?

Kiewit Corp.: What did you play with as a child?

VWR International: How would you market a telescope in 1750 when no one knows about orbits, moons etc.

Diageo North America: If you walk into a liquor store to count the unsold bottles, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do?

Brown & Brown Insurance: How would you rate your life on a scale of 1 to 10?

Jane Street Capital: What is the smallest number divisible by 225 that consists of all 1’s and 0’s?

UBS: If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn?

Merrill Lynch: Tell me about your life from kindergarten onwards.

Susquehanna International Group: Five guys, all of different ages, enter a bar and take a seat at a round table. What is the probability that they are seated in ascending order of age?

Interview Tips:

So how do you answer some of these off-the-wall interview questions? I asked Rusty Rueff, Glassdoor.com’s career and workplace expert. Here’s what he had to say:
Employers want to see how candidates think. For tough or oddball interview questions, it’s not always about getting the right answers it’s about how you tackle a challenging problem. The question for employers may be really about how fast you think on your feet.
When faced with tough questions like these, take a deep breath, slow down and then sound out your thinking process aloud and walk the interviewer through how you get to an answer.
If you feel the question is unrelated to the job or company, before trying to respond, very politely ask the interviewer, “In order to best get to what you are looking for from me, can you provide more detail as to how the problem relates to how problems are solved here?” You have to ask this delicately though as you don’t want the interviewer to think you are being defensive or want to duck the question.
Lynn O’Shaughnessy is author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she also writes her own college blog at The College Solution.

Read More

ReTHINK : Power of decision

Decision was the source of John F. Kennedy's power as he faced off Nikita Khrushchev during the tense Cuban Missile Crisis and averted World War III.

Decision was the source of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s power as he gave voice so eloquently to the frustrations and aspirations of a people who would no

longer be denied, and forced the world to take notice.

Decision was the source of Donald Trump's meteoric rise to the top of the financial world, and also the source of his devastating downfall. It's the power that allowed Pete Rose to maximize his physical abilities to Hall of Fame potential—and then ultimately to destroy his life's dream. Decisions act as the source of both problems and incredible joys and opportunities. This is the power that sparks the process of turning the invisible into the visible.

True decisions are the catalyst for turning our dreams into reality.

The most exciting thing about this force, this power, is that you already possess it you now as you hold this book in your hands. In the very next moment you can use this mighty force that lies waiting within you if you merely muster the courage to claim it. Will today be the day you finally decide that who you are as a person is much more than you've been demonstrating? Will today be the day you decide once and for all to make your life consistent with the quality of your spirit? Then start by proclaiming, "This is who I am. This is what my life is about. And this is what I'm going to do.

Nothing will stop me from achieving my destiny. I will not be denied!"

Consider a fiercely proud individual, a woman named Rosa Parks, who one day in 1955 stepped onto a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and refused to give up her seat to a white person as she was legally required to do. Her one quiet act of civil disobedience sparked a firestorm of controversy and became a symbol for generations to follow. It was the beginning of the civil rights movement, a
consciousness-awakening

Was Rosa Parks thinking of the future when she refused to give up her seat in that bus? Did she have a divine plan for how she could change the structure of a society? Perhaps. But what is more likely is that her decision to hold herself to a higher standard compelled her to act. What a far-reaching effect

one woman's decision has had!

If making decisions is so simple and powerful, then why don't more people follow Nike's advice and "Just Do It"? I think one of the simplest reasons is that most of us don't recognize what it even means to make a real decision. 

We don't realize the force of change that a congruent, committed decision creates. Part of the problem is that for so long most of us have used the term "decision" so loosely that it's come to describe something like a wish list.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Instead of making decisions, we keep stating preferences. Making a true decision, unlike saying, "I'd like to quit smoking," is cutting off any other possibility. In fact, the word "decision" comes from the Latin roots de, which means "from," and caedere, which means "to cut."

When you truly decide you'll never smoke cigarettes again, that's it. It's over! You no longer even consider the possibility of smoking. If you're one of the people who's ever exercised the power of decision this way, you know exactly what I'm talking about. An alcoholic knows that even after years of absolute sobriety, if he fools himself into thinking that he can take even one drink, he'll have to begin all over again. After making a true decision, even a tough one, most of us feel a tremendous amount of relief. We've finally gotten off the fence! And we all know how great it feels to have a clear, unquestioned objective.

Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility.ground swell that we are grappling with even today as we redefine the meaning of equality, opportunity, and justice for all Americans regardless of race, creed, or sex. . The explosive impetus of decision is not something reserved for a select few with the right credentials or money or family background. It's available to the common laborer as well as the king. It's available to

Read More

Business Killing Acronym

Not Invented Here is a common organizational syndrome:  If my company — or I — didn’t think of it, it must be worthless.  (A close cousin to NIH is IHBLR, Invented Here But Let’s Reinvent It Anyway.) 

Individuals also fall prey to NIH.  Everyone has worked for a boss who hated any idea we proposed unless we found ways to make him think it was his idea.

NIH can affect anyone:  Supervisors, managers, and especially executives and business owners — because the root of all NIH evil is ego.  The higher you rise, the greater the risk of NIH infection.

If you or your business has a chronic case of NIH, here are a few antidotes:

• Focus on the idea, not the originator. People at all levels of the organization have good ideas.  Assuming an entry-level employee’s ideas will be worthless is just as foolish as assuming your boss always has great ideas. Gold wrapped in cellophane is just as valuable as gold wrapped in velvet; the value is in the gold.  With ideas, value is in the idea, not where the idea comes from.
• Focus on the idea, not the industry. I learned more about increasing manufacturing efficiency from spending thirty minutes in a poultry processing plant than I learned from any formal process improvement program.  (And I’ve gone through — and led — a bunch of programs.)  Keep an open mind and sometimes the best ideas can be borrowed from other industries.
• Focus on the idea, not your ego. Being in charge doesn’t make you smarter, savvier, or more creative.  Being in charge just makes you the one in charge; leaders aren’t granted a monopoly on great ideas.  Don’t hesitate to let others shine.  If one of your employees comes up with a great idea, it reflects well on you: You’re a great leader!  You’re developing great employees!  You deserve a raise!  (Okay, maybe not the last one.)
• Hold a “something borrowed” session. Next time you meet to brainstorm, tell everyone they can only suggest ideas they’ve be successful somewhere else.  That automatically removes NIH from the equation since any suggestions by definition were invented elsewhere.

Reinventing the wheel can be expensive and time-consuming.  Plus there is no guarantee of success.  Often mediocre companies are stuck in an endless loop of NIH.

Business-Killing Acronym : LSD

Lead Singer Disease describes a singer in a rock band whose ego grows unchecked and eventually breaks up the band.   (Or starts judging American Idol.)

LSD can also describe any CEO, business owner, or manager whose ego outstrips his or her performance.

Want to know if you have LSD?  Diagnosing the condition is easy.  In the last month, did you:

• Make a mistake?
• Admit you were wrong?
• Have any bad ideas?
• Say, “I’m sorry”?

If you answered “no” to all of the above (or, really, any of the above) you have LSD.

Here’s the cure:

• Talk less — a lot less. No interrupting, no digressing, no hijacking conversations in progress. LSD runs screaming from silence — your silence.
• Listen more. Ask for an employee’s opinion or input and then actually listen.  Keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself.  If you must speak, only ask clarifying questions.  You’ll be surprised by how smart your employees really are once your LSD is into remission.
• Let others run with a project — and stay out of their way. A primary symptom of LSD is the compulsion to inject your own thoughts and suggestions into an employee’s idea.  When you do, you kill the employee’s motivation.  If their idea needs tweaking, ask leading questions to help them identify the necessary modifications themselves.  In short:  Let an employee’s idea remain the employee’s idea.

Feel free to convert LSD as applicable:  Lead Supervisor Disease, Lead Salesperson Disease, Lead CEO Disease… the LSD shoe can fit a lot of feet.  Just make sure it doesn’t fit yours..

Read More