The Startup Journey

D. Shivakumar of Pepsico India has a nice presentation type summary in Founding Fuel from the book "Move Your Bus" by Ron Clark. The book classifies team members into high performers (" Runners " - who consistently go above and beyond what is required.), the dependables (" Joggers " who do their jobs well without pushing themselves), average workers (" Walkers " who just get pulled along) and deadweights (" Riders " - who put their feet up and slow down the whole enterprise). Here from the slides are the characteristics of "Runners"... Runners bring positive energy   Runners carry the load and provide momentum. They come early to work, never complain and bring a positive energy.  Runners go for excellence Runners are driven by the goal of professional excellence and take pride in contributing to an entity that wants to be top notch. Their impetus to work hard isn’t led by personal accomplishments, but is more abou...

Lovely column by Devdutt Pattanaik in Economic Times with examples from Mythology - Ram and Bharat (humans) vs Vali and Sugriv (monkeys) vs Ravan and Kuber (Demons) - in answer to a question from CEO on succession planning. (Emphasis mine.) A yajaman is proactive in decision-making and responsible for its consequences. Did your CMO do what he was told to do or was he taking independent decisions and responsibility? Did your CFO just do his job, but go out of his way to take decision and take responsibility, not just for success but also failure? Most critically, did you see any one of them groom people to take their respective job. If they don't help people grow, if they don't think beyond their domains, if they are unable to think future and take risks, they are probably not good to be leaders. To be a yajaman, one has to take people along. Who amongst the two tries to take people along? This does not mean consensus all the time. Sometimes it requires force, a little pushi...

You can point to the articles by Prof. Sreekumar Rao in his Economic Times columns here If your life is mechanical, it is because you have made it so. Human beings have a great capacity for making anything and everything routine and eventually, 'boring'. ... Why do you go to your 'mindless' job? It is likely because it gives you a paycheque. With this paycheque - inadequate as you may feel it to be - you support your family, pay your rent, save for retirement and entertain yourself. At some level, you know this. At some time, you were aware of this. But this knowledge has become buried in layers of the 'routine' that you now complain about. Dust off this knowledge and bring it to the forefront. Keep it there. and here Your knowledge of your current industry gives you an edge that you can use. In every industry, even the shrinking ones, there are some companies that are growing and gaining market share. What can you do to make your company one of the...

Second time I'm coming across this "being watched issue" this week. From Srikrishna's post (emphasis mine): What most of us don’t realize is that we are actively, even if blindly building culture in our companies every waking moment. The trouble is when we do this without being mindful or engaged, we usually end up building a culture that we are surprised about as it invariably bites us in the rear. Starting from the moment you step into the office, people see if you greet the security guard, whether you get your own cup of tea or put it away when done. Whether you text in meetings or worse yet when you answer the phone during a 1:1 meeting. Even if you answered yes, yes, yes and no & no, they see what you do or say when a senior team member flames another, or a team member screams at a vendor. When you are quiet about a white lie to a customer or don’t question why a payment is being withheld, you are communicating loudly and shaping culture – though ...