Lessons for a father - The Art Of Persuasion

I have always believed that persuasion is very hard to master. It can definitely be achieved, but multiple things need to go right for it to happen. There is timing involved, there is a need for the right setting and the audience's ability to listen (LISTEN: Blog Post). But most importantly there should be trust.

On the other hand, there is always the "bulldoze" method of achieving one's goal(s). There are circumstances where people have and/ or have been forced into acceptance literally and successfully.

The best picture (worth a thousand words as the saying goes) I could find. Credit to www.themotivationalposters.com

Right or wrong? One better than the other? I might not be the best choice to answer that question currently. Why? Well because we are dealing with an audience that finds logic and reason hard to fathom. The situation can be controlled only partially and even then, sometimes, very temporarily. Let us take an example of trying to put an infant to bed. Just for giggles, let us add to that the factor that the infant is having a lot of fun (or the other extreme of supreme crankiness) and does not want to sleep. Mere details like time of the day, or tired parents or schedule make little sense.That is where persuasion comes in very handy. Something else that takes on a role of huge significance is a team-mate that can be relied upon (especially at 3:00 am). Multiple studies and experiments have revealed innumerable approaches to handle the situation. I do not believe that any parent would have had success "just off the bat". There is a lot of trial and error and experimenting that happens on a daily basis but the sight of the final goal, of the household decibel value going down a notch or sleep of a few, but cherished, hours, is never lost.

In a lot of ways, that is quite similar to dealing with clients. A client might be very happy in their current situation (example: happy with their current IT infrastructure) and might not want to take the next step (example: Much needed infrastructure upgrade). Or, the client might be very upset (example: internal disputes or suffering from unreal or high expectations) and not in the condition to take the decision(s) that might be good for them in the long run. It all comes down to convincing them to listen, trust and appreciate your better judgment.

Both situations demand that we lay the foundation of the relationship based on trust and not shy away from making unpopular and sometimes seemingly unfriendly choices. Both situations are based on having the audience's best interest at heart. Both require, a lot of times, an infinite amount of patience.

Lessons for a father - The HR evaluation

There is power in numbers.

This strength increases quite a bit if the people that make up the numbers act like a team with a shared vision and motivations. Individual capacity gives way to collective ability and astonishing achievements usually follow.

What I say above might sound like a cliché. Please bear with me.

Perfectly oiled teams that do not have individual or collective issues and that do not suffer from any constraints are very rare to find. It gets even harder when there is an expectation that the team's vision will outweigh individual aspirations.

Fortunately, the last few months in our lives allowed us to be a part of an amazing team. My wife's loving  family had extended a helping hand while we welcomed our son into this world. Their generosity extended beyond any expectations and their presence created an environment of calm and control (two things that I recommend very highly to new parents) in a household that would have struggled otherwise. There was a shared vision (make the first few months of the new mother as easy as possible) and a common mission (help each other out wherever and whenever needed).

Unfortunately the existence of this team was transitory. The last instance of familial generosity left a couple of weeks ago and we were left with, what on day 1 seemed like, a very big human resource challenge. Both of us work and between deadlines, dinners and diapers, our days seem to vanish without a trace.

Something had to be done about the current state of affairs. We sat down with intent and intelligence and after various state diagrams, flowcharts and work-flow documents realized something very enlightening. The presence of our family had allowed us to take our own time to learn the art of raising a child. Their patience and willingness to share years worth of experience, coupled with the birth and growth of multiple generations of cousins had allowed us a chance to learn and get good at the basics. We knew exactly how to handle things. Then it became a matter of prioritization and implementation and elevating the degree of efficiency associated with the tasks at hand.

In essence, our parents had become our mentors.

Our work lives is really not that different. Every day we meet people that share experiences and impart wisdom. With years of having done it before they can become much better teachers, with usually a more pragmatic sense of what works and what does not, than any book or school that we utilize.The expectation that we should have from ourselves at that point should be twofold:

1. Listen
2. Filter out, at source, information that is not important.

I think with the right intent,  implementation and intelligence we can solve almost any problem we have. Teams, organizations and families that succeed usually have constituents that depend on each other for support.

Like Steve Jobs once said, great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people. I agree. This also holds true for good families.

Lessons for a father - The Idea of Preemptive Execution

Last week was just one of "those" weeks. Demand for delivery, both at home and work, went through the roof and everything was needed to be done by the end of day yesterday.

Times like these heighten calls for efficiency, efficacy and a sense of enlightenment. A very pertinent question also gets raised: How do we accomplish everything that we need to in a very limited amount of time?

There can be a lot of right answers for the question I pose. One of them could be to get a bigger pool of resources. Another way could be to set real expectations with the stakeholders to begin with. Yet another technique might be to do what some of us usually do - extend our day ad-infinitum and "get it done"!

We have realized, more at home than work, that there might be another possible course of action that we can take. There are situations, which we face almost everyday, where preemptive action can help us tremendously. For example, we know that our son requires a set of things for his day care. Instead of waiting to pack his things when they are needed, i.e. in the morning, can we get some things done at night? Sure. Would that give us more time in the morning to, let us say, get to work on time? Yes. Then the exercise turns to answering another question: Are there other things that we can accomplish, in anticipation of their demand, before the demand really appears? The answer is mostly in the affirmative, with caveats and barring exceptions of course. 

Having learned this lesson at home, I tried to take it to work. What part of my weekly (or daily) work can be done before someone asks for it? If there are, let us say, 3 meetings that I need to attend at work each for an hour, can I put that time in into my time sheet (due weekly) before the meeting (caveat: editing of the time may be required if the meetings run longer or takes less time than anticipated)? I would think so. Doing this might help me in the long run because I would have to spend less time when I finalize the time sheet for submission. I would definitely like that. 

The same rule, of preemption, can be followed at a lot of different levels. For example, communication to and from a team to stakeholders can be to let them know of something that is about to happen (good or bad) to rule out any surprises.

Preemption may not always be possible or feasible. There are times, however, when accomplishing things before they are needed to be done can lead to a couple of goals that what we all strive for:

• Success, and more importantly
• Satisfaction

Lessons for a father - The Power of Now

Now: At the present time or moment

There is a lot of sense in creating plans for the future. Right down from what gets eaten on what days to planning a vacation in the future makes pragmatic sense. A plan enables us to work towards accomplishing what we set out to do. For some it might translate into saving money, to others it might mean going to school or a college or learning a new vocation. Excellent ideas all. The change in our lives, in the not-so-distant past however, forces our hand at planning too far ahead. It does bring an opportunity though to live in the present and enables us to achieve small, albeit pertinent, goals in our daily lives.

Take for example the case of our son's elaborate entertainment:

Our son loves his Jumperoo. He jumps within its safe confines and the accompanying music and his "animal buddies" give him a lot of pleasure. So does all the rest of the toys that he has accumulated in his life so far. The question really is, what happens to all these when he goes to bed (not so often yet and not for that long either...YAWN!!)? They need to be swept away to their respective places so they can be brought out and played with again the next day. Their absence from the middle of our living room also allows us to have, even for a few hours, our living room back. A part of my, what I hope to be, logical brain tries to convince me to leave the toys exactly where they are. Our son would need them again soon enough. The other part of the same logical (again, debatable at best) mind forces me to clean the chaos and create organization. Which one should I listen to?


Both thoughts are logical enough to not warrant ignorance. Both have my interest at their core. Both are achievable.

We have, in the past few months, realized that we need to accomplish tasks as soon as they are needed to be done. If we do not, we automatically assign to them a level of importance that marks them unimportant and they are delayed ad-infinitum.

I tried to take the same to work. Whether it is a case of conflict resolution or a case of well earned adulation, the best way to get it done, I think, would be do it NOW! All the articles (and there are many) and videos (they are even more) that are based on the premise of an increase in personal, and in turn, organizational efficiency point towards a daily "To-Do" list. I am personally a huge fan of that. On the other hand, I am also a follower of the dynamic nature of this list. Things, issues, circumstances, people and obligations are some examples of reasons why the to-do list keeps getting altered.

So usually I just have one item on my list:

Think of what you need to do and go do it now.