WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

"WOW! What a lovely experience Singapore was!"

A friend of mine exclaimed, sheddig cigarette-ash in a corner while stamping a ticket coupan on railway platform. He had just returned having enjoyed a 10-day sojourn in Singapore. The ash that he shed fell on an automatic ticket vending machine (ATVM).

Everything so neat and clean there!
Everything in working condition! 

Responding to a customer so quickly, with smile and with such a respect! And back here nothing works!: He continued.

Things do work here! I corrected him pointing towards the stamp-pad he was using to ink his ticket. Things do work here but (I smiled saying) on bypass-surgeries:

1/ Stamp-ink-pad as a bypass for vending machines (jammed due to dust),
2/ Long queue on window counter due to "staff shortage" (read "absenteeism")
3/ High-technology ATM "out of service" due to "breakdown" or "stockout of currency notes",
4/ Half the toll-tax lanes blocked due to equipment on Toll-booths "out of order",
5/ Traffic jam on a flyover, half of it's width being full of potholes,
6/ Fyover over-the-flyover in order to bypass chaotic traffic underneath it,
7/ 'Diversion' because half  the road bottlenecked by garbage and vendors,
8/ Garbage not picked up because disposal-van broken down.

The list of bypass-surgeries is endless.

By the way can you tell me top reasons (rather root-causes) of  "breakdowns" of equipment in particular such as vending machine, I asked him. 

Key to the "WOW experience" that you 'told' me about is in there my friend, I told him. 

He looked at me sarcastically hinting "not to be professor-like". I can afford to be one here in blogpost, at least for the sake of waste-elimination whatever may be it's worth in reducing global warming. Hope he reads this sometime.

A couple of top order root-causes of typical "breakdowns" that lead to loss of desired performance are:

1/ Dust and Dirt (due to littering like by my friend who might have behaved well in Singapore)
2/ Loose connections in equipment
3/ Casual attitude towards both the above (lack of maintenance, littering, etc) because apparently the causes don't look dangerous

Same logic of root-causes can be extended to the breakdown of health also. 

Actually his comments on Singapore were in praise of "the 'lovely' culture there" i.e. their attitude of prevention of such root-causes with a sense of proactive urgency. South Asian countries including South Korea, Singapore, etc. were one of the firsts to have learnt this from Japanese Kaizen culture. 

What is culture?

Culture is a sum total of behaviors (such as follows) as reflection of attitudes, beliefs and values in every walk of life, moment-in-moment-out.

Shedding cigarette-ash in an ash tray or a dust bin, for instance, is a desired behavior unlike the one exhibited by my friend. 
Not smoking in a public place is a desired behavior. 

Being wasteful at the cost of life, abandoning smoking itself is a desired behavior.

Being frugal on any kind of waste be at personal level, in society or at work.

Sum total of such desired behaviors 'results' into "WOW what a lovely experience" kind of impression of good culture. 

How does one get desired culture?

Getting desired culture is about getting desired behaviors.

Most difficult approach is to 'tell' others to 'behave'. Easiest way out is to get it from 'self'. Then 'recognise' the 'self' for having done it in order to stay motivated. Then find 'others' who do it and recognise them.

This is 'selling' approach to get the desired behaviors.

How does one do this professionally if in position-of-power to do so?

1/ Decide not more than a couple of strategic goals for "WOW experience": Choose one of the top priority apex goals to delight stakeholders and focus on it.
2/ Break the apex goal down into smaller ones
3/ Identify behaviors complementary to the smaller goals
4/ Remove hindrances (3D: Dirty-Danger-Difficult situations) in performing processes to achieve the goals and remove wastes to make the processes lean

5/ Demonstrate leadership by performing such behaviors yourself

6/ Lay a platform and use it at regular frequency to recognise desired behaviors and to punish undesired behaviors particularly if repeated intentionally
7/ Make corrections to improve the above process (steps) on-goingly.

In short,

1/ Set a behavior goal and focus on it!
2/ Behave it rather than preaching it!
3/ Lay a platform to recognise the desired behavior although it's outcome (of the desired behavior) may not be as desired. You may have to reprimand or punish an undesired behavior though!

4/ Enjoy the resultant improvement in culture although it may not be a WOW one! 

5/ Move on to the next priority goal

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

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
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

Winning 2-Minutes To Customer

Just read in Loksatta about one Mr Chitale receiving compensation of Rupees 7250 directly transferred to his bank account y British Airways for wheel of his bag getting damaged in handling. Airlines' response was smooth and speedy he said. Airlines had tried to repair the bag through their supply-chain partner but in vain.

In 1997, I was in NewYork on a group-study-exchange mission organised by Rotary International. While traveling from NewYork to Orlando, inadvertently my bag reached to Chicago. I complained to the airlines office at the airport. They promptly sanctioned 100 Dollars to me against the bills for essentials like overnight clothes, toothpaste, etc. Being around Disneyland I was happy to buy a couple Mickey-Mouse brand clothes at the airport.

Next day morning I got a 'good-morning' call from reception desk saying my bag was already in the hotel lobby safe and sound. Not much trouble for me although the airlines did have an opportunity to eliminate the error in baggage handling.

In a stark contrast to such delightful experiences, in 1981 I had to run from pillar to post knocking doors and windows in vain for a broken bag and its damaged contents due to erroneous handling by Air-India. Since then I avoid flying on it: a customer-quit as they say.

I remember that painful experience even after decades.

What is the learning?

There might be some chance of a person forgetting a good experience but hardly any chance of a customer forgetting bad experience from a supplier.

In case of one airline it was about 'sensitivity' to customer complaint while dealing it with a 'sense-of-urgency'. In case of other airline it was about 'indifference' to customer.

Now a days the sensitivity has acquired some strategy and structure to respond to customer complaints as a part of excellence-journey of companies. 

A Structure To Respond To Customer

I had introduced a 2-2-2-2©structure in terms of a model to respond to any stakeholder in general and to customer in particular. It was first introduced in a Cummins group company: Fleetguard Filters Limited Pune.

It was later on institutionalised in Cummins group worldwide.

In the context of a customer complaint, the 2-2-2-2© model might mean 2-Minutes, 2-Hours, 2-Days, 2-Weeks time-bound response to  customer for a given level of performance strived for. The response is supposed to eliminate root cause/s of the abnormality within 2-Weeks rather than stopping at first-aid treatment that anyway must be given within 2-Minutes. A powerful review mechanism driven by CEO (with an escalation matrix that an aggrieved customer can access in case of non-compliance) is an integral part of the structured process in order to ensure the timeline and quality of it's compliance. 

In the context of various other business situations, the timeline may be different and must evolve. For instance for an emergency/crisis having high impact, it could mean 2-Seconds, 2-Minutes, 2-Hours, 2-Days.

There is an empowerment mechanism built into the structure. Timeline-based visible dimensions as above are the generic ones. Company specific visible dimensions may be some sanction limits such as 100 Dollars compensation or a freedom to handover gift for the hassles or the efforts taken by the customer to complain and so on.

More important are the invisible dimensions that result into the culture reflected in terms of the spirit, the body-language, the humbleness, the humility such as that I had experienced while the airline employees responded to the complaint in making it hassle-free and speedy. 

There is tremendous scope and choice for innovations in both in order to delight customer with differentiation. The invisible ones in particular are difficult to emulate. That's where lies the competitive advantage.

If such a structure is implemented effectively, the customer becomes supplier's advocate and it's rewarding in long run as well as in terms of short term sales and numbers. Such an advocate is much more effective than even a highly paid marketing manager.

A prospective customer is likely to believe and act more often if recommendation comes from the horse's mouth: The Word-Of-Mouth!

That's How Morons Work

Calendar showed bank-holiday for Mohharrum marked on Thursday 14th.
Last minute it was changed to Friday 15th.
So Sachin Tendulkar got more spectators on idiot-boxes for his career's last cricket test-match.
Wankhede stadium housed-full for the match that had begun on 14th.

No doubt I am his fan but had many other priorities.
My schedule of submitting a renewal application for instance on Friday 15th had anyway got upset due to last minute announcement of change in holiday.

That was generation of a waste due to 'waste in planning' as above!

Their website was working with interruptions so somehow the least I could do was to download the form. While Sachin stepped on field, early in the morning I rushed to the authority's office to 'field' them. Luckily there was no queue perhaps because public had queued to watch Sachin bat.

Without even looking at the form, expression-less staff on counter repelled me saying: "We don't accept renewal forms on Saturdays".

He didn't bother about my request to "at least verify the application form for mistakes and inadequacy in attachments, if any."

That was a 'waste in manpower and energy' of the office facilities!

So I had to schedule a leave from work on Monday additionally with a provision for revisit again in case of any inadvertent gaps in the form.

That was a 'waste in mandays and fuel'!

Some questions arose in my mind... Likely in yours too!  

Why was it not possible for the authority to declare on their website 'what activities they perform (or don't) on what day of the week'?

That was a 'waste by not using technology' although installed!

In absence of transparency of such information for customer, why was it not possible for them to verify and accept the form on Saturday itself. It was just a matter of filing it overnight until Monday for onward processing. Their staff was sitting on the counter anyway.

Why should the customer be made to suffer!

'Waste in manpower' due to inadequate methods as above!

What's the learning?

Rather than any new learning, the episode reconfirms the way morons work and the way they run their business processes. 

That's how 'man' (ab)uses 'power' in inefficient and ineffective sectors and makes customer powerless.

I know the situation is too small an experience than large scale disgusting experiences most of us might have had.

The purpose of bringing it up here is to draw parallels from among such experiences, be it in private or public sector, manufacturing or services industry. The real value-adding time in most of the processes is hardly five percent. For instance, the 'renewal' in above case doesn't involve more than a few seconds for 'a check' of past records on the computer (provided it's working) and then signature by the verifier and his boss. But in reality it takes much more, just as it takes twenty minutes at times on a fuel pump while filling operation itself doesn't take more than a minute.

Hopefully an awareness on the wastage as follows and inefficiencies thereby that such practices breed might help begin reducing them to make processes leaner.

Waste in planning, design, etc.! 

Waste in methods! 

Wasted manpower and energy of the office facilities!

Wasted mandays and fuel!

Wasted technology!

Wasted resources in general (material, space, machines, etc.)!

Gravity of such inefficient and ineffective work-culture can be judged by estimating the costs (direct, indirect, tangible as well as intangible) that the corresponding stakeholders have to bear as a result of such wastes. 

An eye opener for their leadership to begin their journey towards a Zero-waste Leaner company!

I think title of this post should have been: That's How Morons Generate Waste! 

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

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
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

Fearful Death-Of-Birth !

Imagine anxiety and fear of a typical interviewee:

Sir, what's my profile and what will be my pay?
I am employing you 'To Borrow My Worries' and your annual-pay will be 'A Lakh of Dollars' dear: replies the businessman.
The Interviewee: But how can a small business afford such a pay package?
The Businessman: That's your first worry!

Imagine anxiety of a typical mother of a patient when Doctor asks:

Which news would you like to hear first, I have a bad news and a very-bad news for you? 
Patient asks for bad news first.
Doctor says: Your lab-test results show you have 24 hours to live.
Patient: Only 24 Hours! Oh My God!! Can there be any worse news than this?
Doctor: The very-bad news is I've been trying to reach you since yesterday.

Jokes apart. 
Fear has power to pull one down from all the previous achieved happiness and achieved goals in one shot.

At spiritual level as Saint Gondavlekar Guruji says, anxiety and worry is like termites. One can't see it eat anything.

Termites are evident only in the form of a destroyed book or cloth. Similarly, effect of anxiety and fear can be seen only in the form of destroyed faith and confidence in one's own self and thereby in terms of an undeserved outcome or a failure.

In fact if studied scientifically as well as spiritually, in longer run
- the so-called failure as also success turns out to be relative, and then,
- one accepts 'whatever happens, happens for good' at the end of putting in best efforts.

In longer run many 'windows-&-doors' of opportunities do open unless one succumbs to termites of anxiety and fear in the interim.

Hence not allowing fear to be in the vicinity should be one of the most important goals, in fact should be a top order of goal of everyone.

And so far, that was about managing fear for material goals.

Ultimate, the choicest of all goals, is to manage mother-of-all-the-fears: The Fear-of-Death.

It's about empowering one's own 'self'.

It's about training one's own 'self' on domain knowledge of a beautiful spiritual thought reflected in various versions of a poem that I came across sometime somewhere:

Looking at the horizon, someone by the side of the sea exclaims, "Oh, the Ship is gone !" just while on the other side of the horizon someone rejoices, "Wow, the Ship has arrived !"

That's where it's the 'Death of the concept of birth' and vice versa.

That inspires me to give a little poetic touch-n-tip:

Life-Boat for Fear-of-Death !

Why do you cry "Oh, S/he is gone !"
Let someone rejoice, "Wow, S/he is born !"
On the day this thought is borne !
Fear is gone with a gift of New Dawn !!

In A Big-Problem?: Wear Hats To Solve It !!

Life is about tackling gaps! Gaps among:

1/ what we 'want' (i.e. what we desire to have),
2/ what we 'need' (i.e. what we need to survive) and
3/ what we 'have' (i.e. our current situation).

These gaps are referred to as problems in day to day language. Gaps may be in terms of physical, mental, financial, social or spiritual health, both at individual & societal level.

So life is about overcoming various hurdles or problem-situations in order to bridge gaps at individual & societal level. In positive sense, life is about opportunities to add value to self & society while tackling problematic situations.

This post is an extension of my blog-post titled In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !! In that post, I dwelled upon the fact that 'dwelling' provides 'adult-in-you' to 'respect' others like 'adults'. It provides an opportunity to look at a given problematic situation in totality. It allows asking 'what-when-where-who-why-how' questions to it's components without a bias.

This ability is particularly important in order to solve chronic problems as well as crises and larger issues.

Sometimes acknowledging a problem as a problem itself is a problem as in P.J. (Poor Joke) in punchline of this blog where Mr Foolhardy falls again-and-again at same place! Like Foolhardy, some do 'love falling' and getting 'cured again-n-again' rather than taking preventive 'care'. Some hardly go beyond first-aid attitude during entire lifetime. 

Why is this so? What should the case really be?

One reason may be lack of respecting discipline: the undesirable habit nurtured by both, one's own parent-ego and child-ego. Other one may be lack of training  the adult-ego to solve complicated problems.

One way to overcome the former reason is instituting strict disciplinary measures as a stick on undesired behavior of parent-and-child-ego. The other way may be to install measures for attitudinal change so that adult-ego takes active charge of the situation to steer it to a desired one.

This blog-post is about tackling the latter i.e. training mind (the adult-ego) on importance of 'dwelling meaningfully' in order to improve effectiveness of problem solving.

Problem Solving Steps

Problems can be categorized in four quadrants based on combination of:

1/ ease or difficulty level of identifying them and/or their causes and
2/ ease or difficulty in finding and/or implementing countermeasures on them.

Difficult-Difficult-type problems in particular need to be resolved step-by-step by breaking them down into smaller stones so that prioritized one can be taken one at a time. It's like breaking a mountain over a period of time in steps of blasts in a typical mine and thereafter hammering the larger (post-blast) rocks into smaller stones with an objective of making them worthy of utility.

Need for undertaking logical steps with equanimity gets enhanced with rising level of difficulty to identify the problems and/or to resolve them.

 7-steps in the Plan-Do-Check-Act Improvement (Kaizen) Cycle are:

Plan Step-1: Define a problem or a goal to create an innovative utility-value

Plan Step-2: Observe gaps in the current situation with reference to the goal (This is done after the first-aid solution is put in place)

Plan Step-3: Analyse and find root-causes of the gaps

Plan Step-4: Plan countermeasures to prevent occurrence and recurrence of causes

Do Step-5: Implement countermeasures

Check Step-6: Study effect of the countermeasures 

Act Step-7: 7a/ Standardize so that favorable effects are sustained 

Step-7b: Rotate the above steps: 1/ until favorable effects are achieved in case of unfavorable effects, 2/ to attain higher levels in case of favorable effects, 3/ to take a new improvement goal

''Dwelling'' on a predefined agenda in each problem-solving-step allows flow of unbiased creative thoughts useful for complicated problem solving. It allows 'brain-writing' those. It involves 'speaking-to-self' by asking 'why-why & what-where-who-when-why-how' kind of questions and 'writing' the evolved thoughts. 

This is contrary to 'speaking-to-others' as in brain-storming. Such a 'don't-speak' rule wearing a pink-hat virtually to represent that the problem-solver is in 'dwelling-mode' allows flow of 'wild-thoughts' that otherwise may get killed as in brain-storming.

I have added the Pink-Hat as the 7th-Hat to Edward De Bono's idea of 6-Hats: White, Red, Green, Black, Yellow And Blue, each with a purpose.

The Pink-Hat as a common one represents 'brain-writing' activity as above in each of the 7-steps that I have connected to an appropriate hat each. Pink-Hat is used in combination with each of Bono's 6- hats primary to a corresponding step. Each hat forces adult-ego to focus primarily on the agenda predefined for that particular hat and that particular step.

In step-1, Pink-Hat begins with taking ('brain-writing') inventory of problems. Then a priority problem is picked up to solve. As stated earlier, Pink-Hat is used in each step in combination with corresponding hat of that step to 'brain-write'.

In step-2, White-Hat is used to find factual gaps in an unbiased manner.

In step-3, Red-Hat is used to find root-causes of the gaps without keeping any emotional attachment to the problem. 

In step-4, Green-Hat is used to find alternative ideas (innovative countermeasures) to arrest root-causes.

In step-5, Black-Hat is used to critically assess risk while innovatively implementing ideas (countermeasures) .

In step-6, Yellow-Hat is used to assess benefits of the countermeasures taken.

In step-7, Blue-Hat is used to take an overview in an unbiased manner.

Going back to the earlier blog-post, the problem therein that of locked-door not opening was Easy-Easy-type. However applying structured steps as above could have yielded additional opportunities as follows over and above the first-aid solution that 'clicked' then:

1/ Create a 'how-to' operating-procedure for odd-season working of equipment,
2/ Create a 'checklist' to prevent abnormal behavior of equipment in odd-season,
3/ Create an innovative-design or material for the door and lock capable of handling abnormal conditions.

So one can imagine the potential and impact of application of hats in structured steps in case of  Easy-Difficult-type, Difficult-Easy-type and in particular that of Difficult-Difficult-type chronic and complicated crises situations.

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

Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily 

Old-Problems, New-Reasons !

Ant Knocks Elephant Down 
Will It Work Here?
Can-changing-thoughts-change-nation?
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important 
Talent-Is-Latent: Enable It! 
Judge If It's Paralysis-By-Analysis 
Will It Work Here? 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Does recognition really matter 
Who Comes First: Consumer Or Customer ? 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Do You Ask Right Questions?
Am I 'Short-sighted' or 'Long-sighted'? 

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Comprehensive-Strategic-Audits

Prevention: The Best Cure! ... Is it really so?
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms !
When Safety Becomes Sorry 
Drove To Hell ... Almost !  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !!
Part-1
In-big-problem? Wear-hats-to-solve-it! Part-2
How To Make A Difference
Big-Be Or Bug-Be !
Make checklists your friends
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis
That's How Morons Work
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable
Waste-to-eat-sea-to-drink

Success Or Failure: What Do You Like?

This blog-post is a standalone extenson of my blog-post titled In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !! When the door-lock referred in there failed to open 's/he' (character in the blogpost) overcame the initial panic by 'dwelling-a-while' in a smile (on self)!

In the 'relaxed' moments thereafter, s/he didn't 'worry' about the situation as a problem although appeared concerned' about it. S/he considered it as a passing-phase. The adult-ego part of her mind as in Transactional-Analysis (TA) considered the problem as a stepping-stone! Problems as opportunities in work-clothes' as Henri Kaiser says. S/he crossed the 'stone' with care.

Most often rather than end-result itself, it is 'worry' in the interim (before and after an event fueled by Murphy's-law as they say) that intimidates & affects activities in the present. It consummates us in the process. It pushes even the bravest of the braves towards undesired results as its ill-effects.

Why does this happen?

There is a thin line between 'worry' and 'concern'! 

From the perspective of Transactional-Analysis, former is the prerogative of child-ego or parent-ego. Latter is that of the adult-ego. While day-dreaming about unpleasant things of past or future, the worry-struck person forces herself into inaction. S/he pushes herself into a vicious cycle of negative thoughts as happened in the case of the locked-situation referred above.

When 'care' was taken with 'positive-attitude' (rather with 'meditative-attitude' of 'concern') locked-equipment did behave favorably. It has scientific-explanation to it though. 

Perhaps an equipment 'behaves' the way the concerned operator/mechanic behaves or causes it to behave. May be behavior of machines around us is often the 'reflection' of the 'behavior' of the concerned operator.

Although a little difficult to get convinced, rather than the situation itself it's the meditative-positive 'attitude' in the interim towards a situation that is likely to help. Meditative-positive-attitude reminds one's adult-ego to revolve her thinking around what one really 'needs'. Mere positive-attitude instead may unnecessarily 'push' one's child-ego or parent-ego in the rat-race of what others 'want' of you.

So after training the mind to calm down by  'forcibly dwelling' in pleasurable moments imaginary though as above, as a natural sequel the next aim should be 'equanimity'.

What is Equanimity? 

Usually human nature or rather (the child-ego or parent-ego part of) the mind is programmed to rejoice successes and to cry-out failures. 

An equanimous behavior is: - not to (overly) worry about result/s per-se, - nor about the undesired effect of a cause or of multiple causes together as also - not to (overly) rejoice even if desired effects are achieved. 

First of all, both the desired as also the undesired effects may not last for ever. Moreover, indulging into rejoice or getting worried as the case may be hinders the learning process in either of the cases. 

An equanimous mind tends to study both the situations. 

And in work-life in particular, it studies corresponding processes in order to find out causes and their complex interrelationships that result into effects. The objective as the Robust-design fame Taguchi San says is to learn and act upon them in future in such a way that the desired causes  recur and undesired causes get prevented from recurring or occurring.

In this context, a saint's advice "Theviley-Anantey-Taisechi-Raahave" that loosely means "Live and enjoy God's design for you" largely seems to be misunderstood. For me, it means 'Live-with-equanimity' while making genuine efforts to design a future for your own-self.

Years ago, I was standing the whole day under the scorching Sun in a queue to seek admission in Sydenham college. The college was considered to be the 'top' in commerce-stream then in Mumbai. I couldn't get admitted. 

Next day I found myself wandering around Ruparel college about eight kilometers away. And funnily I got admitted in science-stream. The then Vice Principal Dr. Shinde personally helped me to fill in the form in spite of no acquaintance with me whatsoever. 

Goal-less, aim-less and clue-less, overnight my thoughts and actions got a swing like a pendulum from considering apprenticeship in an industrial trade to the commerce stream and then swinging from the commerce to the science stream. Being from vernacular medium, I struggled making sense of science subjects & biology terms in particular in the first year. But finally I landed (the right course although) 'off' (the original) course.

Looking back, funnily I am happy. 

Repeating 'funnily' is about another story for  another blog-post some other time.

While writing this, I was dwelling upon whether the so-called 'happiness' as above was an absolute one or relative one! Holding on to the handle of the 'see-saw' tight-n-tough (see picture) I tried to recall that. 

Eventually tough situations in past did not last for me forever particularly whenever 'I' stayed tough (in mind, spirit and actions) in the interim. 

Locks did open for me when caused with efforts. Walls did turn into windows and the windows turned into doors.

So it all depends on how you interpret the See-Saw. It depends upon whether you stay confident in the interim. It's a great idea to dwell upon such questions with relaxed mind in order to find your own answers:

Is it really failing? 

Or is it actually a stepping-stone towards success?

If at all trapped in so-called 'failed' situation, is it worth wasting time 'staying-put' in 'fallen' condition! 

Or Is it worth 'standing-up to an act' with more zeal!  

Isn't it worth taking concrete actions without 'overly worrying' about undesired results! 

Isn't it worth acting upon the learning from the desired ones instead of emoting out 'rejoice'!

Taking concrete actions is what tough people do consciously. They put in extra efforts. And they do it a little longer than others. They learn from both the, so-called failed or successful situations. 

Whatever happens thereafter happens for the good, as the saints say. 

That's equanimity for me!

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

Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily 

Old-Problems, New-Reasons !

Ant Knocks Elephant Down 
Will It Work Here?
Can-changing-thoughts-change-nation?
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important 
Talent-Is-Latent: Enable It! 
Judge If It's Paralysis-By-Analysis 
Will It Work Here? 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Does recognition really matter 
Who Comes First: Consumer Or Customer ? 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Do You Ask Right Questions?
Am I 'Short-sighted' or 'Long-sighted'? 

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Comprehensive-Strategic-Audits

Prevention: The Best Cure! ... Is it really so?
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms !
When Safety Becomes Sorry 
Drove To Hell ... Almost !  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !!
Part-1
In-big-problem? Wear-hats-to-solve-it! Part-2
How To Make A Difference
Big-Be Or Bug-Be !
Make checklists your friends
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis
That's How Morons Work
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable
Waste-to-eat-sea-to-drink

Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green

My Mad-ness.. Bad-ness.. Goodness ... !

5000 km long queue of trucks full of solid-waste everyday by cities alone?

Wonder how much got added to the normal daily-garbage during a typical Diwali festival-day in India?: The crackers, the aesthetic components of primary & secondary wrappers of chocolates, sweetmeats, etc. gone into garbage!

How much does such madness of generating waste cost?

In 2010, it costed equivalent of Pakistan's GDP i.e. it costed $ 205 billion to deal with just the solid-waste world-over!

How much does other kind of waste cost?: 
I don't know the answer.

How much does land quality get deteriorated?:
I don't know the answer.

How much does such waste impact other environmental aspects such as contamination of drinking water, air, depletion of energy resources used to dispose the waste, etc?:
I don't know the answer.

How much does it cost and will it cost in terms of health issues in future?:
I don't know the answer.

Many such questions rise like smoke!

It may be easier to find answers if the questions are like 'smoke of a fire in seed-stage' kind problems. Unfortunately the smoke is of 'the fire that is already a wildly raging one' that has reached beyond human control. 

Google search may help find the answers. But the answers so far have been inadequate and incomplete! Research had been unable to keep pace with pace of problems rising due to consumerism! Queue of the garbage trucks otherwise wouldn't have been so long equivalent of covering aerial distance between London and NewYork.

By the time Newtons and Einsteins of the world perform difficult part of finding well-researched inventive-solutions, the only proven 'Zero-Garbage' action everyone can easily participate in to prevent waste is to make their celebrations innovatively Green!

Let's celebrate and recognize each such person who celebrates Green, each such day and each such moment that is celebrated Green!

Here's a MaiKu© poem while on the subject:

Rain Goddess lost destination
It's all raining perspiration
Cause lack of Green Celebration

©MaiKu Is My-Haiku
Freely ideate it's poetic rhymes
Any objective topic it chimes

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save!

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)
Functional-Aesthetics
Bust-wants, Boom-needs

Should one care for value? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

What You See Isn't What's Made

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Less With More And More Gets Sore 

Should one care for value?  

How To Make A Difference 

Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 

That's How Morons Work

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? 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Poverty-to-Power of Poetry

Bird that just chirped

Soon-waste-to-eat, Sea-to-drink !

Don't Save Water on Holi-day