Book Review: Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

Author: Geoff Colvin

Publisher: The Penguin Group

MyRating: 5/5

‘Talent Is Overrated’ is not another book in the volumes of ‘Performance Improvement Tips’ that fills you with motivation while reading and then pushes you into the black-hole of repentance when facing real life situations.

It would not be exaggeration if I call this book as ‘research paper’ aiming to present the available facts in easiest words possible. This book is an inside story of all the great achievers of the world; be it an organization or an individual.

The world often mesmerizes with the great shots of Tiger Woods in golf arena. They praises it as god’s gift or hard work without realizing that fact that his father made him to sit and watch him hitting shots hours after hours when he was only seven months old. The author claims that there is nothing like ‘natural talent’ or ‘hard work’ that makes any performer as best performer but it is the ‘Deliberate Practice’.

The author, Geoff Colvin, is the senior editor at Fortune. He is the lead moderator for the Fortune Global Forum and he co-anchored ‘Wall Street Week’ on PBS for three years. According to the author, both the hard work and natural talent camps are wrong. What really makes all the difference is a highly specific kind of effort that few of us pursue when we are practicing golf, pianos or stockpiling. This book shares the secret of extraordinary performances and how to apply these principles to our lives and work.

The book is divided into eleven chapters breaking the all-prevailing myths. And explain the steps to deliberate practice. I fail to find any assertion in the book that is not supported by any research and example. Colvin explains deliberate practice is a large concept. It’s about: what exactly need to be presented? Precisely how? Which specific skills or other assets must be acquired?

Deliberate practice is very hard and in most cases it is ‘not inherently enjoyable’, then why do some people put themselves through it day after day for decades, while most do not? Where does the necessary passion come from? The question has been answered in the last chapter ‘Where Does the Passion Come From?’

The passion to put oneself into the deliberate practice comes from intrinsic motivation. The intrinsically motivated state is conducive to creativity, whereas extrinsically motivated state is detrimental. To explain this author has used may illustrations, one of them is: ‘For most of the mathematicians, the joy of discovering a new way of solving problem was more important than a high test score or receiving good grade’.

But not all the time extrinsic motivations that do not work. It has been observed in many cases that extrinsic motivation stimulated intrinsic motivation. Like, “if you don’t do your piano practice we’ll sell the piano” or “If you do not go to swimming practice we’ll take you off the team”. If the child truly didn't care about the piano or swimming these threat wouldn't work but if he cares about them these threat will work for him.

Chapter five and six explains about what deliberate practice is and isn't and how deliberate practice works. How can we apply it in our lives and in organizations is addressed by section seven and eight in the book. There are three models of practice; the music model, the chess model and the sports model which can be applied in different arenas of practice.

No question is left unanswered by the end of this book. It is not that book that is entirely read in one deep breath. It is serious intervention in the personal and organizational performance set-up. The book is written in easy and racy (exciting and interesting) style. I recommend this book to everyone who struggled to perform well and to those who are in the field of training and development. 

Book Review: The Heart of Change

Author: John P. Kotter

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

MyRating: 4.8/5

Significantly changing the behavior of a single person can be exceptionally difficult task. Changing 101, or 10,001 people can be a herculean task. Yet organizations that are leaping into the future succeed at doing just that.

Turbulence will never cease but winning organizations will continue to deal with this fact by following certain steps of transformation. The transformation means the adoption of new technologies, major strategic shifts, process engineering, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring into different sorts of business units, attempts to significantly improve innovation and cultural change. To understand why some organizations are leaping into the future more successfully than others, one need to see the flow if effective large-scale change efforts. And this flow is often a set of eight steps that few people handle well.

The story of ‘The Heart of Change’ starts with the Author’s first book ‘Leading Change’. Leading Change describes the eight steps people follow to handle large-scale change for any transformation in the organization. According to the author, a few questions were unanswered, especially about how more specifically achieved what was described in that book. John Kotter, author of this book, got the invitation from Deloitte Consulting to work on a follow-up project by massive interviewing and to collect stories that could help people me deeply understanding the eight-step formula. The Heart of Change digs out the core problem people face in all of those steps and to successfully deal with that problem.

John Kotter is internationally regarded as the foremost authority on the topic of leadership and change. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita professor of Leadership, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and a graduate of MIT and Harvard. Most recently Kotter was involved in the creation and co-founding of Kotter International. He has authored eighteen books, twelve of them are bestsellers.

This book is extending the scope of eight-step process by explaining how they can be implemented using various case-studies from different industries. Kotter’s main finding is that the core of matter is always about changing the behavior of people and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people’s feelings. So, See-Feel-Change mechanism is more powerful than Analyse-Think-Change, asserts Kotter. The pattern of Seeing-Feeling-Changing is applied in all steps to steer the emotions of the people.  

The book is divided into eight chapters, each explaining the proceeding steps of change, supported by convincing conclusion. The book has been written in easy and racy style, full of zest and strong quality that would make even a lay reader to sit-up and think.

The first step contributes to the idea of creating urgency among relevant people. Too much complacency, fear, anger, or all three can undermine change. A sense of urgency gets people off the couch and ready to move which is succinctly explained though ‘The Videotape of the Angry Customer’, a case. When employees watch the video of angry customer, most employee were surprised, some became fearful, many find false pride dropping a notch and a sense of urgency growing within them and they start listening to the customer and management. Now they talked about the need of change. When urgency turned up, in step two, the most successful change agents pull together a guiding team with the credibility, skills, connections, reputations, and formal authority required to provide change leadership. This group learns to operate with trust and emotional commitment. In the best cases, the guiding team creates sensible, clear, simple uplifting visions and set of strategies, this comes under step three. Detailed plans and budgets, although necessary, are insufficient in large-scale change. A vision shows an end state where all the plans and strategies will eventually take you.

Step four narrates the importance Communication of the vision and strategy, which is simple, heartfelt messages sent through many unclogged channels. The goal is to induce understanding, develop a gut-level commitment, and liberate more energy from a critical mass of people. Step five is all about removing the key obstacles that stop people from acting on the vision. People are Empowered with information and self-confidence to work for the vision. In less successful situations, people are often left to fend for themselves despite impediments all around. So frustration grows, and change is undermined. Obstacles in the form of system barrier, barriers of the mind and information barrier disempower people. The author cautions trying to remove all the barriers at once.

The most interesting and important step is short-term wins, which is step # six. The wins are critical. They provide credibility, resources, and momentum to the overall effort. Without sufficient wins that are visible, timely, unambiguous, and meaningful to others, change efforts inevitably run into serious problems. Initial wins consolidate early changes and that should not declare victory prematurely, warns author in chapter seven. The most common problem at this stage is change efforts is sagging urgency. Success becomes an albatross. “We’ve won”, people say and you have problems reminiscent of those in step one. Finally, step eight concludes the change process my making the change stick. Change leader make change stick by nurturing a new culture. A new change - develops through consistency of successful action over a sufficient period of time. Appropriate promotions, skillful new employee orientation, and events that engage the emotions can make a big difference.

Because the world is complex, some cases do not rigidly follow the eight step flow, but the eight steps are basic pattern associated with significant useful change. This book is not a textbook of management school but a handbook for professional manager. It is the outcome of industrious research and insightful results to make any large-scale-change a real and long term success. 

Book Review: SUPERPOWER? The Amazing Race Between China’s Hare and India’s Tortoise

Author: Raghav Bahl

Publisher: Penguin Group

MyRating: 4.5/5

China’s growth story has always been the fuel of discussion for opposition parties in India and for everyone who chooses to criticize India’s way of growth. Undoubtedly, China’s hare is far away than Indian tortoise when we compare the gigantic Chinese GDP with India’s GDP. But comparing two countries on the basis of only one parameter i.e. economic fundamentals is not quite apt when we are comparing these contenders for the next superpower. The emergence of these two potential neighboring superpowers came out from the ironic different paths of history explains Raghav Bahl, the author of this book; “SUPER POWER? The Amazing Race Between China’s Hare and India’s Tortoise”

Raghav Bahl is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Network 18. He was hailed as the Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum and selected by Ernest & Young as Entrepreneur of the year for Business Transformation in 2007. The book starts with the notion of doubt that prevailed long among the western countries about the survival of India as the world’s largest democracy. But with the existence of universal adult franchise (It is the right of all adult citizens to vote without any discrimination), equal fundamental rights, a daringly free press, a genuinely autonomous judiciary, a bustling entertainment and information society, a strong English-speaking middle class, a high quality technological and education infrastructure and the culture of liberal thoughts; the west could not discount the contender-ship of India, like China, as a future super power.

The book is comparing India and China on five parameters which are explained in five parts of the book; the race begins, geo-politics, entrepreneurs, consumers and English speakers, urbanization and infrastructure and social infrastructure. In the epilogue section, the author bets fifty-fifty on India and China stating the reasons for not underestimating India’s potential of growth and overestimating China’s capabilities. The book ends with answering the questions related with the future of India and China, which is supported by the experience of the author, not with any forecasting model. It makes this book more comprehensible and easy-to-read for anyone who wants to know the history and growth model of both the countries, without any technicality.

Both India and China were giants in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and accounted for 50 per cent of world GDP in 1600. But two hundred years of colonial domination shrunk their economies and political space on the globe. The British describe their rule as one which ‘civilized’ India whereas China’s colonial history was far more turbulent several rulers without a similar ‘institutional osmosis’. India attained freedom in 1947 and Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China at a massive rally in Beijing. India became a parliamentary democracy and China became a totalitarian state. Till 1978, both the hare and the tortoise were at the starting line but hare had started it reforms at this time while tortoise didn’t realize this till 1991, a decade later after China stared to leap in the race. Nearly two and a half decades after hare has become a $5.9 trillion gorilla while tortoise is a 1.6 trillion cub.

The robustness of the two models was tested in 2008 during Leyman Brothers collapse. When whole world got panic India’s stock market reacted the other way allowed its investor to short the stocks while China, whose stock markets had not even been introduced the concept until then, chose to go ahead with a trial experiment in short selling just a month later.

When religion is the main force behind geopolitics played by America, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other countries, it is clearly not driving the geopolitical reflexes of India or China. But economic ambition is. Raghav Bahl equalizes both India and China on geo-political parameter. I think, he should also mention the effect of China’s ‘veto’ power in United Nations in world’s geopolitics.

When George Soros (a well-known investor) visited India in 2006, he said in his interview that the one word that makes India far ahead of China is ‘Entrepreneurship’. China has over 2,000 listed companies and more than 80 percent of these are state-owned and India has over 6,000 listed companies and over 95 percent are privately owned. The demography of India is far more conducive to the India’s growth as compare to China. By 2020, US could be short of 17 million people of working age, China 10 million, Japan 9 million and Russia 6 million. Only India will have a surplus of 47 million people in the working age. If India can harness this population then it could become the job exchange of the world. But if it fails to do that, India could become the job graveyard, explains Raghav Bahl.

The sector where China made progress by leaps and bounce is urbanization and infrastructure. China has become the standard for India can be seen in the PM’s statement when he wishes to transform Mumbai as the Shinghai of India. The author keenly studied the basis of this difference which lies in the approach of both the governments. While Chinese mayors may be accused of overreach, Indian Municipal leaders lacks ambition. China has added 20,000 km of railways tracks in last two decades and India done a 860 km in same period. China’s rail investment was $133 billion in 2010, fourteen times that of Indian railways. China has 18,000 km of coastline against India’s 7,500 km. China also has 1300 ports against India’s 200 making China a bigger seafaring nation. In 2010 China has 960 GW of installed capacity, five times more than India.

The race between China’s hare and Indian tortoise will depend on the China’s not-yet-fully tested model of ‘escape velocity’ and India’s classical and sustainable model of development. When China is investing nearly half of its GDP in its factories and creating infrastructure, India is struggling to hit the meagre targets in investment. Paul Krugman, a Noble Laureate, explains that the answer will not be quite as simple as who is investing more and growing faster today but a lot will depend on who has superior innovation? Who has more entrepreneurship savvy? Who is expanding in intensely competitive conditions?

The growth potentials of the two countries are measured on tangible and intangible abilities of India and China but, I feel, Raghav Bahl should also have covered the available natural resources in both the countries and their approach in acquiring the world’s resources. The growth model of United States resides on its huge natural resource base and their strategies in acquiring resources in other parts of the world. If any country wants to achieve and maintain double digit or close to double digit growth rate then the sustainability will largely depends on the fulfillment of its energy requirements.

 The book has been praised by Anand Mahindra (VC & MD, Mahindra and Mahindra), N.R Naraina Murthy (Chairman, Infosys), Mukesh Ambani (Chairman and MD, Reliance Industries), Bimal Jalan (former governor RBI), K.V Kamath (Chairman, ICICI) and many more authors, policy makers and entrepreneurs. I found the complements from Mr. N.R Naraina Murthy are most apt in the description of this book. He says ‘In his inimitable way, Raghav Bahl has painted very insightful and highly data-rich perspective on the history and potential of India and China. His powerful story-telling, backed with analytical research………..’.

The author disclaims that he is not writing this book as academician or economist or policy maker so he recommends reading this book as a work of instruct, intuition and his experience. But I didn’t find any arguments or statement, given in the book, that is not supported by any data or available fact. 

Phones become smarter, people get dumber

Big data, unfettered information, the ability to be in constant contact, and our growing reliance on technology are all conspiring to create a noisy traffic jam between us and our place of insight and peace. Call it an iParadox; our smartphones are actually blocking our path to wisdom.

Read Complete Article:  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/phones-become-smarter-people-get-dumber/article5571750.ece

Election 2014: What Is There For A Common Man?

Year 2014 came with the promise of giving the chance to choose the government for the next five years. People from all over the country are more active and excited this time as compare to last election in 2009, atleast on social media, as many of them wants to exercise their voting right. The conventional political fight has become more interesting with the entry of AAP and activation of some regional parties. People are joining some party or other in an attempt to make an impact in the development of the country which is not bad. Couple of months ago, I failed to understand when Kiran Bedi said that people too can work a lot from the outside. Is there anything for the common man to do in the current politics? Can he/she participate from outside?

There are three types of people in the elections; one, political parties and their leaders who will be the direct beneficiary for victory in the election, two, volunteers of these political parties, which are seen as supporters, are the indirect beneficiary of these election as they KNOW SOMEBODY who is in the power, third, the common man, who is always at the at the mercy of their leaders for whom they voted for.

Let us see what common people are doing right now; they have some preferences for some political party like BJP, Congress, AAP or any other region party. They think these parties can do something good for them, which is not wrong. They post everything for the support of these parties on Facebook and tweets in the favour of this party, they want to win every discussion which is related with the party of their interest. People are searching and researching material to post on their wall and if any one comments anything against it then there are exchanges of news articles, youtube links, reports and anything and everything which is in favour of his/her party or against the other party. Isn’t it happening right now?

“Whatever is good, it is for me, whoever says”, may be the another strategy of this common man but when they commit to some political parties, they have to prove everything right, inside he may be feeling it wrong. Do they have any obligation to prove their leaders correct in all respect? No political party can be envisaged as free-from-doubt and has the magical stick that will change everything. Biasedness is our greatest enemy. All political leaders are delivering their speeches, although it’s political, and one can judge it correctly if he/she is unbiased. Our leaders, most of them if not all, are very good students of marketing and they know the power of positive and negative branding. They give us the spectacles of negative brand from which we 

see our opponent leader with.

Time and again we blame them for their arrogance, autocracy, nepotism and cronyism but we have also contributed in some way or another to make them powerful, we prefer to defend them by giving the examples of opponents that they are more wrong-doers than mine. Let negative criticism leave onto these leader and their paid-agents we need to adopt positive criticism from all the depths of our wisdom, which is the required most at this time.

Kashmir: Not a Black and White Problem

In the cozy living rooms of middle class India news from Kashmir excites the people and gives them the chance to prove themselves as the great lover of the country by saying few line about it like ‘Dooth Mangoge to Kheer Dange, Kashmir mangogay to cheer dange’ (we will give you anything you want but if you want Kashmir then we will tear you), ‘Why don’t we attack Pakistan to solve the problem of Kashmir’, ‘The people of Kashmir don’t want to be in India and army is teaching them nice lesson’, ‘When we are giving them so special rights like article 370 then what else they want’. ‘Those who are helping the terrorists should be killed’ so on and so forth’. These casual comments on Kashmir try to make the issue black and white which hints that the solution is very easy and why not the Government of India is showing its intention to solve the issue.

Time and again the hue and cry for Plebiscite is asked by the people from some parts of the society considering that it will solve their problem. There are three sections of the people in J&K, one, who wants to remain with India, second, who want to go with Pakistan and third, who wants them to be independent and not to be ruled by India or Pakistan. We can sense that the majority of them don’t want to be with Pakistan but skewness of the graph tilted toward India and Independent Kashmir from time to time. Let us say, majority of the people want to be Independent, what answer do we have? Before jumping in to the conclusion and imagined-theories we first understand how this segment of the people looks towards India.

This section of Kashmiris never likes India, because they always have seen India with guns in CRPF jawans or in army men. Outside they are been treated as terrorist and in Kashmir they think they have been treated as slave. The history has created their memory the way it is and Pakistan continued fueling the issues to create a hostile environment against India.

Parveena Ahangar achieved international attention in 1994 when she formed Association of Parents of Disappeared People (APDP). On 18 August 1990, Javed Ahmad Ahangar, then a 17-year-old student, was allegedly picked up by the army for a militant. She started an agonising search for her son. She informed the local police station about his arrest and staged a sit-in on the road for a full day. After a six- month search for her son, she finally approached the court which ordered an inquiry into her missing son's case. For four years nothing substantial happened in her case. The state government's request for sanction to prosecute the accused Army officers was not granted by the central government. In 1994, determined to continue her struggle, Parveena formed the Association of Parents of Disappeared People (APDP). The APDP believes 8,000 to10,000 people are missing.

On 21 August 2011, the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) confirms that 2,156 unidentified bodies lay in unmarked graves in 30 locations in north Kashmir. The SHRC had ordered the investigation after taking cognisance of a December 2009 report on mass graves titled “Buried Evidence” by the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK).

Now there are two versions of truths; one version says that these are the bodies of militants who were killed by armed forced and another version says that these bodies are from 10,000 missing people.

The incident that further strengthened the memory of this section of the people is Kunan Poshspora incident occurred on February 23, 1991. An army unit launched a search and interrogation operation in Kunan Poshspora, Kupwara district and 53 women were allegedly gang raped by soldiers that night. Villagers claimed that a police investigation never took place in the region. Wajahat Habibullah, former DC, asked why not the incident was first reported and answer was not easy. Some women don’t want them to be publicize as the raped victim in the conservative society and others who wanted to come up were not heard.

After much criticism Press Council of India investigate the incident and medical examination conducted on 32 women nearly one month after incident, confirmed that the women had wounds on their chests and abdomens, and that the hymens of three of the unmarried women had been torn. But the team claimed that that such delayed examination proved nothing.

Once again there are two versions of statements; one states that the charges against army were bundle of fabricated lies and a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and all allegations are grossly exaggerated or invented. Another version, from Asia Watch, in its 1991 stated, ‘The alacrity with which military and government authorities in Kashmir discredited the allegations of rape and their failure to follow through with procedures that would provide critical evidence for any prosecution’.

The plight of soldier fighting in the Kashmir valley is not less critical than the people of Kashmir. If he is asked to kill the enemy in battlefield, he doesn’t have to give the second thought but to shoot. But if he is landed in the place where he is surrounded by his own people but some of them can be his enemy whom he has to kill to save him and his country. Thousands of the solders have given their lives in the valley.  Nearly 4,000 soldiers have been killed in the country after the Kargil operations in 1999 while more than 390 Army troops have committed suicide in the last three years, Lok Sabha was informed on 25 November 2012.

Minority hindu and majority muslims believed and created ‘Kashmiriyat’ in the long past was ruined by the crackdown in 1990’s, when a number of forces started playing together; ISI’s role in Kashmir, Political right of Kashmiris, Mujahideen Influence, religion and human rights violation by militants and by armed forces. The people in Kashmir, whether participated with any force or not, remain the only victim.

Happiness Simplified

The more we fool ourselves the more unhappy we are, isn’t it? Happiness is something we search most in an attempt to make us happy. The place where happiness is searched most these days is ‘Google’. We try different keywords to find it out; ‘what is happiness’, ‘how to get happiness’, ‘why happiness’, ‘how to remove boredom’ so on and so forth. And finally ended up in bundling some notes, taking some printouts, pin it on our desk, bedroom, study table, computer desktop, forcing us to believe that we have found the key to happiness but does it give us happiness? Second source of collecting the fooling material is self-help books (many of them if not all) where we want to improve us to be happy. Some self-acclaimed ‘Bestseller Book’ burdened us with a long list of to-do-steps which fills us with the feeling of guilt when we can’t practice them and we fall back into the auto-pilot mode where circumstances decides our way of action.

Furthermore, we are taught by ‘Smart People’ to behave in the certain way to be happy; one such attempt to show ourselves more and more happy to others, irrespective of we are or we are not. We try to be happier by showcasing our Happy-Personality to others, does it make us happy? Sources of gratification make us feel that we are happy but in reality we are not. Happiness is something which is permanent; gratification is temporary. Any action which gives us life (not only happiness) all the time we do, is real source of happiness, how?

Some friends of mine have helped me in understanding that. Varun, a computer programmer, is not one of the programmers who write codes for a paycheck from his company but programming is in his DNA. He can write codes through days and nights and that is happiness. Unlike many other programmers, he looks for the opportunities to write computer codes. My another friend is Vishal, a driller by profession but poet by heart, who has found his happiness in writing the poems. Recently, I came to know that he is going to write for some international publisher.

We have understood that how happiness has influenced our life but still we need to decode the secret of happiness. “When we are able to channelize our creativity in our action, there comes happiness”. Creativity is not confined to create a beautiful design, write poems, create computer app and so on. Creativity comes out when we connect with something and engrossed into it. To be connected is not to be influenced. We influenced with programming when we see somebody is earning a handsome amount of money in it. On the same time we influenced with an actor when we see a lot of people hangs around him/her. ‘I too can do that or I can do even better’ is connection and ‘I should do that’ is influence. The moment we find out the ‘Something’ we can connect with is the beginning of happiness.   

We cannot connect with everything or anything but we can connect with something which is in-sync with our true nature. When we connect, creativity flows into it and happiness follows.