Change is a hearty game!

I wash my cup after tea and plate after food almost immediately. As much early (JIT) you do so, as much lesser resources you consume. Because, they are easier and faster to wash with less water when they are still wet.

The other day I'd to do it with left hand because one of the fingers was swollen after clipping off my nails.

It was difficult for me because I am a right-hander.

Usually any change is difficult but possible. Try signing with your left hand if your are used to doing it with your right hand.

I'd to get the senior management team of a company to try this out the other day. The reason was their impatience on the change management initiative in their company.

It was just about a few weeks having begun the initiative. Each visit the managers would be anxious to know when would their subordinates change their work habits for the better.

Change management is about commitment to change self first (PQI, personal quality initiative). It's about putting in concerted and continued efforts during the process because it's more to do with head (mind) and heart rather than hands (physical actions) alone.

Listening to other's 'voices' (be it your employee or customer or any stakeholder for that matter) actively plays a major role in the change management process. It's not merely hearing but it's about hearing them tactfully and tenderheartedly... Hear-T in short! Active listening creates an emotional connect or a connection with their heart.

Mind (head) always connects a little later. Mind connects only after the heart gets connected. Heart itself gets connected if they see your concerted and continued actions towards the desired change rather than empty speeches and promises.

Their actions to change their habits as desired is the corollary thereafter!

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

Mosquito to teach patience
Voice of Customer

No Time? Micro-Meditate!  
What do you do when a dog barks at you?
How To Make A Difference 
Conscious Of Self-Esteem
Catch a Butterfly

Overworked? Tension? CPU of the mind hung-up? 
Do you exercise your choice meaningfully 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important? 
Eternally Happy! 
In-a-problem? No-problem! Dwell-a-while! 
I am afraid ! What do I do !! 
Fearful-Of-Death-of-Birth
Take Habits For A Ride 
Happy-Birthday-to-Youooo
Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Are You Good If Others Are Bad?  
Want Need-Or-Want 
Love is Care.. Care is Love !  
Deity is in the eyes of the beholder 
Success-or-failure! What-do-you-like?
Ball-Basin-Team Combine !  Maketh The Smile Divine !! 

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

Mosquito to teach patience

Say, you are busy reading a long pending novel.

A mosquito sits on your left hand.

No sooner you shove it off, another one troubles you.

You get upset. You try to hit it hard.
It escapes leaving a mark on your hand.
The cup of coffee by your side spills over you and over the book as well.

Nothing happens to the mosquito.
You get more angry.
If at all, everything that's wrong happens to you.

You hurt yourself physically.
You mess it up around.
You lose balance of mind as well thinking that everything wrong happens to you and you alone.
That enhances the chances of more reactions rather than a rational response.

Reactions generally tend to be wrong.
You invariably hurt your own-self more.

That's exactly is the result of getting angry.

Not that I'm free from it.
The learning that, however, I draw from it is that there's no point in getting angry.

Reactions tend to damage you your own-self more.
Instead, better to stay in control.
It's better to act (as well as proact) rather than re-act while enjoying the process of tackling the difficulties at hand.

Mosquito is perhaps the reason designed for you to learn patience and to learn to come out as a more composed personality.

If a mosquito can

You too can

Make a difference man

That's my Haiku inspired by the quote of Dalai Lama: "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

No Time? Micro-Meditate!  
What do you do when a dog barks at you?
How To Make A Difference 
Conscious Of Self-Esteem
Catch a Butterfly

Overworked? Tension? CPU of the mind hung-up? 
Do you exercise your choice meaningfully 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important? 
Eternally Happy! 
In-a-problem? No-problem! Dwell-a-while! 
I am afraid ! What do I do !! 
Fearful-Of-Death-of-Birth
Take Habits For A Ride 
Happy-Birthday-to-Youooo
Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Are You Good If Others Are Bad?  
Want Need-Or-Want 
Love is Care.. Care is Love !  
Deity is in the eyes of the beholder 
Success-or-failure! What-do-you-like?
Ball-Basin-Team Combine !  Maketh The Smile Divine !! 

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

5-S reality in Virtual world!

The other day an intern requested for an industrial visit with me.

Normally, it's good to test such requests to know the purpose, their commitment and their preparation. So, I asked him to self-learn through some blogposts before he earns the privilege of the visit. He did do it and earned himself the industrial visit.

Having got impressed by the learning during the visit, he seemingly continued his self-learning.

"Sir I was thinking one thing.. how can we apply 5-S to the I.T. (information technology) industry where everything is virtual?"

I like questions!

Questions show that the mind-factory isn't on strike!!

What's the virtual world by the way?

Conventionally, virtual is virtual if it's without brick and mortar. Hardly anything in this material world is virtual in reality! Even in the spiritual world... where it is subtle though!!  The so-called virtual world does have some hardware, at the least such as, say, computer and corresponding devices for the I.O.T. (internet of things). The office itself that houses the table for the computer, the pendrives, the central processor room, corresponding SOP displays and spares, et all is a reality.

Of course, a typical virtual world primarily may have virtual files. Each file may have some words written on it. The words do get realised if corresponding thoughts are in place.

Good thoughts emerge if mind is free of clutter. Unneeded thoughts are the clutter that the Seiri step of the 5-S can help get rid off. Just as it releases some memory (brain) cells for storage of the needed thoughts, similarly doing Seiri of the virtual files and virtual folders releases some memory bytes and gigabytes for storage on the hard-disk of a computer.

A typical screen design: layout and positioning of information, color codes on it, etc. to make it look aesthetically attractive, and yet functional in performance, difficulty-free with maximum information display with optimised space utilisation, itself is about applying Seiton principles effectively and innovatively. 

Accessing the information just-in-time (JIT): easily in a single click without any waste is about applying 1-is-better principle of Seiri. It helps to keep information live and realistic so that real time changes can be effected while responding to the customer demands rather than based on forecasts.

It helps to keep information live and realistic so that real time changes can be effected while responding to the customer demands rather than from stocks based on forecasts.

Excessive stocks usually tend to be obsolete warranting Seiri on it to prevent obsolescence.

So, like in material world, all the principles of 5-Ss are equally applicable in the 'virtual and spiritual world' as well.

I could write this blogpost almost instantaneouy in reply to the query by the smart intern because Seiton of virtual files and folders was in place on my smartphone.

The picture of the book page that is in this post was handy because of its PEEP on my smartphone. I could accommodate many such value adding files on the limited space on my smartphone because of the Seiri of the unneeded 'unlimited' things (WhatsApp for instance) that don't find space on my phone.

A typical software programme itself applies Seiri technique to eliminate unneeded steps. That's why you see an APP getting smaller and smaller in (MB) size as part of its continual improvement.

So applying 5-S in virtual world is about 5 things:

5-S of the corresponding brick and mortar,
5-S of the corresponding Hardware,
5-S of the corresponding software programmes so that they become leaner,
5-S of the corresponding business related Big-Data so that extracting information out of it is faster,
5-S of the Mind (so that it helps attain meditative state faster).

Also read a few relevant blog-posts hereunder: Please do consider sharing this post or sharing your initiatives on above lines in comment box.

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
One-Is-Better for JIT 
How To Make A Difference 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Nauseous Communication Gaps 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 
That's How Morons Work 
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
That's how some business partnerships work 
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Technology in-place, security dis-placed
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 
Customer or Custo-Mer?  
Experienced A Delightful Payment ! 
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul 
Less With More And More Gets Sore 
Should one care for value?  
ABCD of India Shining
Beware Of Political-Presentations 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings

Passion or Fashion?

7 P.M. Cool and pleasant evening. I was on an evening walk.

I was almost pulled by the rhythmic beats of Mridangam (a type of percussion instrument) from behind the hedge.

Raja (name changed) was practising, looking at the notations by his side. He could hardly read the notebook. He was sitting in dark at the farthest corner by the side of the eastern express highway in Thane.

For over five minutes Raja didn't even realise that I was standing by his side watching him play the Mridangam. My wife was watching patiently from a distance. She is used to such foolish halts of mine.

With a little bit of inquiry (finally when he looked at me), I came to know that he stayed in a rented shanty. His workplace was a few kilometers away. And that he sometimes came to practise in this corner whenever he got time. Once in a month he would go to his native near Murbad about 100 kilometres and take lessons from his Guru there.

What a commitment towards one's passion!

Whereas it is very easy to get spoilt (with smoking, drinking and chewing tobacco) in a metro city like Thane or Mumbai, the boy chose a corner and Mridang. The young boy (at 20 age) was pursuing his passion by the noisy and polluted roadside after work hours.

The reason: 

His neighbors would complain to his landlord about the 'noise' of Mridang. 

No room inside his room that he shared with a couple of partners.

Many 'innovate' hurdles to complain of 'why and how a thing couldn't be done' even after the corresponding resources were available in abundance. The young boy instead found solutions over his hurdles while nurturing his passion, staying alone 100 kilometres away from his family.

What an empowerment and self-enablement!

Sure to grow into a real life RAJA (King) of his passion if he continues to nurture it with consistency (rather than Passion as a Fashion) and self-managed supervision like Ekalavya.

Actually while I was writing this blogpost, my wife showed me a WhatsApp ping. It wrote "Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, that was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:

In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

If so, do we stop to appreciate it? " particularly when it comes free!

May be the boy is still to go far as a percussionist.

But what I wanted to appreciate was that that's how big names get made. In fact most successful people in various fields have left similar trails in their individual lives. They had little more patience to turn tables over while their problems were hell bent on testing them.

Their passions won over their problems by miles!

Big names get made when people find opportunities in problems without complaining about lack of resources, if any.

Big names get made (with holistic satisfaction as the result) when people find and nurture their passions rather than running after the run-of-the-mill careers.

Who knows (like Joshua Bell) sometime in life the boy may become a great percussionist if not Padma Shri Zakir Hussain!

In his humble mind, perhaps he already is!!

Here's my Haiku poem over the learning of the day:

Passion isn't a Fashion

Success isn't a cushion
Life is being in Motion

Also read a few relevant blog-posts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or consider sharing this post.

Do you know a Best-Career-Plan

Take your career in fast lane!

Talent-Is-Latent: Enable It! 

Crying? It's time to kick-it-off! 

Is Your Job Boring!

Is the Free cheap?

Overworked? Tension? CPU of the mind hung-up? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important? 
Eternally Happy! 
In-a-problem? No-problem! Dwell-a-while! 
I am afraid ! What do I do !! 
Fearful-Of-Death-of-Birth
Take Habits For A Ride 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Are You Good If Others Are Bad?  
Want Need-Or-Want 
How To Make A Difference 
Success-or-failure! What-do-you-like?
Succession-Plans In Fast Lane! 
Do you exercise your choice meaningfully
Do You Ask Right Questions? 

Carrier for the Career 

Is the Free cheap?

It was TIMES (of India sponsored) SANSKRUTI time!

Thane loves anything to do with cultural (Sanskruti for Culture in Sanskrit and most other Indian local languages) activities.

Since a last couple of years, the year had been beginning in Thane with a big bang of cultural programmes representing art from across India... be it 'Kesariya' song from Rajasthan in West to Manipuri dance from the far East and Kashmiri culinary art from the North to the Katthakali dance from deep South.

Among many other programmes to choose from, the celebrity stage was to present the pop-queen of India 'Padma Shri' Usha Utthup on the last day.

I was left with a coupe of tickets extra since my friend couldn't join due to his last minute commitment.

So I offered the tickets to someone standing near the entry gate eagerly trying to catch a glimpse of the stage: I've got this extra. Do you want it? Free!

He looked at me with suspicion about the 'Free' and turned his head away.

Then I walked a little. Asked a middle aged couple if they were interested. It's Free I said. They shrugged as if I was asking for some favour.

Finally I found two young (college going) boys: I've got this extra. Do you want it? This time I asked without saying it's Free. My intention was not to make it appear Free.

Momentary reply was No cash sir!

Then I explained to them (why) it's Free.

They grabbed it. I'm sure they must have enjoyed their grandma like Usha Utthup sporting her trademark Bindi on the forehead with a look of a lady in her 30s, with a soulful but melodious and powerful voice none less than that of a 17 year young girl.

Hats off to the talented 'Padma Shri' Usha Utthup for her lovely-n-lively presentation to a jam-packed 10,000 strong audience at the age of 70 with the same enthusiasm and passion that of (her own) 1970's.

The questions that brushed my mind were:

Although it may be inconsequential to the first couple of pairs to whom I asked, they lost the 'Free' opportunity that came walking over to them just because they didn't hear attentively to what I offered. Poor communication (perhaps from me)! Perhaps I asked wrong questions!

Often people tend to perceive before even they hear completely! 

People hardly listen actively!!

People have no value for the things they get free and get them without any efforts!

People choose to think Free is (always) Cheap!

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or consider sharing this post.

Listen To The Iceberg Beyond Tip

Big-Be Or Bug-Be !

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow

How To Make A Difference

Nauseous Communication Gaps

Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis

Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam!

Will It Work Here? 

Some Moron ! Some Great !!!

That's How Morons Work

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass 

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture

Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice?

That's how some business partnerships work

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !!

IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

Do You Ask Right Questions? 

Take your career in fast lane!

Talent-Is-Latent: Enable It! 

Crying? It's time to kick-it-off! 

Is Your Job Boring!

Overworked? Tension? CPU of the mind hung-up? 
Eternally Happy! 
Take Habits For A Ride 
Are You Good If Others Are Bad?  
Want Need-Or-Want 
Success-or-failure! What-do-you-like?

Digitally Lean, Physically Fat

Just heard from a marketer about Digital-Lean! that he was trying to sell. No wonder there's a pull of  IOT (internet-of-things) all around now.

Seems to be a new jargon though, like Lean-Six-Sigma that evolved while maturing the Six-Sigma initiative of Motorola, GE, et all.

Such jargons that evolve, rather 'revolve' at regular intervals confuse the practitioners.
That was a point of my contention in one of my books 'Stay Lean, Make Planet Green".

Proponents of various management techniques (under jargons) such as BPR, TOC, 6-Sigma, etc. in past advocated hardly anything different than the original JIT thinking itself of Toyota to attain Lean. Nothing is wrong with these approaches except a major difference that the same proponents tried to catch up with either under different jargons or under a few augmented versions.

Most of these approaches focused on working top-down on obviously visible problems (as the links of a steel chain, say, that had already given way) that had reached a crisis stage. Naturally such crises problems demand radical changes. JIT philosophy instead, as a preventive culture, exposes potentially weak (but so far ‘invisible’) links before they actually turn weak and before they give way.  

Apart from the above, the 'people' aspect of problem solving (the Hitozukuri) also got ignored in the former approaches in their enthusiasm to invent newer mathematical models, tools and jargons.

Behavioral part of JIT instead builds and nurtures an army of soldiers capable of exposing and fighting potential weak links. Thereby it preempts failure of the process of making and delivering (the Monozukuri) of the offering.

So, the Fad-of-the-day, Tool-focus is the culprit of confusion, if any.  

Only when it was realized that the 'Toyota approach' is 'much more proactive' and ‘heart-full’ than what met the eyes and gray cells of a few fly-by-night consultants on a study mission to Japan, that the ‘augmented’ versions of their management tools appeared on the horizon of  the management world.

After the Re-engineering as a tool; to BPR; to Re-engineering of Management, etc.; the latest example is the re-christening of highly digitized statistical '6-Sigma'! It was jargonised as 'Lean-6-Sigma' having realized that '6-Sigma' as a measurement was already in use at Toyota. 

Exactly on similar lines, Toyota already had its very own invented SIS, strategic information systems technology in the 1960s. Toyota did the IOT (internet of things) in its own way then. It had its own towers in order to telegraphically release management information so that they could respond to market needs just-in-time, JIT.

They knew that information systems with speed is an integral part in order to be a leaner company. So wherever possible and needed, it was a necessity to get over the bottleneck speed of  physical systems by installing digital systems in order to exchange information in real time as far as possible.

So to that extent, to the extent of available soft technology then, the lean journey at Toyota was already digital.

Today when I heard about Digital-Lean! I thought of cautioning the practitioners not to confuse themselves with it as a jargon. If they do, then the fate could be that the Digital! may get installed but the Lean! may still stay flat and Fat! or rather Fatter! to the extent of the investments made in going  Digital! without correspondingly justified returns (or benefits) over it.

Know that digital was always existing. It's its continual improvement and its development that the today's developed level of Digital! needs to be looked at. It is an integral part of the lean journey anyway.

For instance, going digital in today's context may call for aiding the physical Kanban by E-Kanban wherever possible in support of the physical Kanban (rather than to replace it). The E-Kanban is about the electronic information system about 'when and where to deliver what and how much, etc.' It was earlier existing anyway in terms of a physical card, physical stock management fixtures of needed material and corresponding visuals, etc. Both are supposed to prevent excessive stocks & the resulting wastes!

Another example of going digital in today's context is about the use of RFID tags to sense movements of physical resources during their flow across the supply chain or the value chain.

Or it's about digitally monitoring of the conditions and status of the resources like done using sensors to monitor equipment conditions on-line and using them for decision making (using advanced analytics and statistical analysis of big data) in real time.

But of what use the borrowed 'digital' brain (the digital analytics of data in soft form) is when the real brain 'walks over' (ignores) the real hard data: The data or the hard facts about the probable abnormalities in their seed stage that could be seen, heard, felt, tested (and also tasted) and sensitized in real time?

That's exactly where the caution is.    

                  

                    'Smile-day’ The October 2^nd: Smile!

That's where there's scope for the Digital! to get decimated to be a 'Fad' or 'Flavor of the month', 'Flavor of the week' or 'Flavor of the day', etc. It's much like celebrating such ‘fad-days’ as jargons if people celebrate going Digital! but in reality stay Fat! with problems surrounding them!

Rather than advocating 'fads', a good coach called Sensei in Japanese would handhold, guide and steer the learner to clear off anything that's unsustainable.

So let Digital Lean! evolve and get installed as a matter of strategic need rather than it getting installed to appear modern.

Otherwise it might get easier to digitally smile (as a typical robot would do) while in real world it might still be a physical frown. 

It happened once while I was flying on an airlines! The choice of seat with it's features was a 'window-seat', perfect as it was shown on the computer screen while booking the ticket. But in reality the seat did not have a window at all! 

The last seats normally don't have a window!!

Also read a few relevant blog-posts here-under: Please do consider leaving a comment or consider sharing this post.

Kaizen, even in air!

Digital Corporate Yoga

In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !! 
Soon... Waste-to-Eat ! Sea-to-Drink !!
About my first book World-Of-Kaizen

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
A customer gets what s/he deserves: Shoddy Quality! 
Listen to iceberg of VOC to acquire customers
Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 
That's How Morons Work 
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
That's how some business partnerships work 
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Technology in-place, security dis-placed
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Customer or Custo-Mer?  
Experienced A Delightful Payment ! 
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul 
Less With More And More Gets Sore 
Should one care for value?  
ABCD of India Shining
Beware Of Political-Presentations 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings