Communication - Towards Your Goal

There is basic big difference between human & animals. Animals cannot communicate beyond certain level. We as humans have discovered different methods of communication. There are different languages, different signals, different instruments through which we can communicate. The written communication is so great that we can read today what was written decades, centuries ago. You don't need to be able to speak to each and every person to express your thoughts. Blog is also one of that kind of medium. You can express your thoughts, your thought process, your ideas and people who don't know you too read that. Don't know when it will help someone change his life.

If you are serious about achieving your goals, you should learn to be passionate about it. You need to communicate your passion to your team - be it the customer, be it the vendor, be it your staff and employees. Steve Jobs had famously asked John Sculley (who was Marketing chief at Cola company) 'Do you want to sell cola all your life or want to change the world with computer?', Steve Jobs communicated such that John Sculley had to join Apple. What happened later is a different story all together and this is not the forum. But the lesson to be learnt here is that if we can communicate our goals to the team or potential team member, then half of your job gets done. 

Startups often don't have those resources which those deep pocketed corporate have. How can they build a team? Even after building the team, you need to build right culture in the team. You need to communicate to them about how the culture is being build. You need to share your vision so that there are no confusions. They need to understand your thought process and for that communication is the most important thing. You must be able to listen and communicate effectively so that others are able to understand what you exactly want to say.

Communication - The Key To Success

In my teens, I had gone on one picnic and there was one game played along. There was a big circle formed between the players (roughly 20-25 nos.). All were seated in one circle and one member will start the game. He should tell one message to the person on his right in his ear in hushed voice so no other member is able to guess. This goes on repeating until full circle is complete and the person on the left of the person who started told the message loudly to the gathering. At the end of the game, the original message and the message announced loudly should be same. This has to be confirmed by the first member. 

Funny things happen in this game. First everyone should be able to tell effectively. Other person should be able to listen effectively. So, both the aspect of the communication come in to picture here. You must be able to give the message clearly and you must hear with full attention. You don't have to do any other thing here. I don't remember all the messages, but I do remember one of them. The first one started with 'A Mango on the tree'. When it circulated among all the members, it was announced finally as 'Ek Aadmi Ped Par Chad raha tha'. A man was climbing on the tree. Funny enough. It happened like this. The message 'A Mango on the tree', quickly became 'A Man Go On the Tree'. Someone in the link did not understand English. He was given a translation as was announced at the end. This message was in local language, so everybody else was able to deliver it as it is easily.

The game brings the important aspect of communication. We are communicating because others need to understand it. Whatever is communicated should be legible, understandable for person who is hearing. Many a times, there are pictures in assembly line with message in English and very small letters. The first thing is that the letters should be legible from the readable distance - they should be big enough and clear. Second, most of the members of the working group may not necessarily be good in english or even know english. How can they read then? This is just one example to stress the importance of communication. 

Comfort Zone Should Not Be Comfortable

Everyone likes a comfortable life. While comfortable life is good on personal level, you should not be in comfort zone in professional life. No one ever grows in comfort zone. Ideally the tree will like to be in shadow, but only sunrays can help it prepare food. If it doesn't get light, it will not be able to grow. If we do not let the children walk, they will never learn walking. To learn walking, they must fall a hundred times.

If we help the caterpillar to come out of the egg, it might not get enough strength to survive. Struggle or efforts are must if you want to grow into a strong personality. Do you imagine our body to be fit without workouts. It is true that if we got into a comfort zone, then we will not like to try different things. If we do not try things, we may not come up with new solutions.

You can try one out of comfort zone in a week. So if you are driving to office, don't take your vehicle. Try to stretch yourself a bit in doing things. You may also try your hand at some different sport or climb a hill, go for trekking. These things will refresh you. 

Power Of Having The Goals Written In Front Of You

Working hard without knowing the targets or setting the goals is like roaming around in a jungle without knowing where to go. If you know that you have to go to the east side of the jungle or cross the river, you will move in that direction. Mind you, you may not know the road, but yes you will know where you want to go and will discover the road for it. It is not very different in our life. It has similar parallels when we consider our professional life / business life. If you never want to move out of the jungle, you will  not move. But the day you decide that YES, I want to see the other side of the river, you will begin to find ways. If you just pass on your time and think about moving around, you will just do that. You just think about today and how to live today, then you will do just that. But the moment you think that YES, I want to move on to another level, MIND YOU, your energy will be different. 

Even if you do not have the road map, you will discover one. But you should be single minded about deciding on some goal. Deciding on some goal is like having something in mind a place where we want to go. But imagine that if you are in jungle and you have that photo or drawing of the temple which is on the east side of the jungle or the photo having the village on the other side of the river, then it will be much more easier. If you show the drawing or photo to someone, they may guide you towards that side. But if you don't have anything, it will be difficult for you to describe and for the other person to understand. 

A picture or the exact metrics of the goal would serve similar picture to your mind. If you place such a picture or the metrics in front of you where you can see it, either in office or at home, your mind will see that daily and will find some way. Whenever you are sitting idle and look at the photo, it will remind you. It will make an impression in your mind and your mind will make plans to draw you closer to your goal. You may meet someone who might guide you to that goal of yours. You can sit today and take a pen & paper with you. If you are sitting at some beautiful nature place, the better. Keep still for some time and then write down your goals within 2-3 minutes. Don't ponder. Write in as detail as possible. If you can draw some pictures, then it would be better.

Get More Space Out Of Existing Space

Real Estate is costly. Agreed that due to recent phenomenons, the real estate prices have stabilized or gone down slightly. But in essence, the real estate prices form a major cost of investment. More so in places near Metro cities. We visited some plants in Mumbai where they had made full utilization of the available space. The main utilization came by putting lofts at about 10/12 ft height. So the normal industrial gala of height 20 ft and 200 sq ft becomes that of effective 400 sq ft. They take out tremendous output out of this small space. 

At places located in industrial areas, the rate may not be that high, but still you want to get more space out of the available. You need to understand one S of the 5S. A place for everything and everything in its place. Throwaway all the things that are not necessary. Do regular cleaning of the table and workplace to keep only important things in place. For the rest of the places, make racks and cupboards. Try not to go horizontal with the storage. If you want to make more space, go vertical. By making racks of good heights, you will be able to store more things in that rack. You can keep the rarely used things at top while the things which you use daily or more frequently can be kept below. 

You can also make tables & sofas which have storage places beneath it. You can store files or different things in the secret drawers of the tables & sofas and make your place look elegant & clean. Though you make these vertical spaces, the two mantras are extremely important. The first one is to clean your place regularly. The second one is - A place for everything and everything in its place. This message needs to go about every employee of the organization and they need to be taken on board. 

Customer Feedback

Customer is the most important element which completes the business cycle. The whole business actually is supported with customer. If customers are not happy, your business won't survive. You need to take care of the customer. If you give them the quality that they require, they will be happy. If you give them material on time, they will be happy. But have you ever thought about making better experiences.

Many customers won't tell you anything until you ask them. If you give them things that they need, they won't ask you anything. But if you ask for some feedback or improvement, they may tell you some suggestions & tricks. What you need to do is make one feedback form. Meet the customers once in a year especially for this feedback form. Other meetings might be for some other tasks like accounts, quality, schedules, etc. But this time you should not talk about any other things, until it comes from them. You just need to ask feedback about the things that you are doing. 

How is your service? How is the products? Anything on packaging? Anything on delivery? Anything on the quality side? Anything on the process side? If you ask these things, they may probably give you some information about some things that need to be improved. And this things should not be kept as it is. If you receive some feedback then you should make it a point to implement it in your area. The customer should feel it. You can also give them the thank you note and the photos after the improvement. This will just delight them.

Leverage - Small Efforts Big Results

Every man on the earth is given the same time. Time does run out of our hands if we do not utilize it. If you are able to understand how someone is able to achieve big results while others just linger around. Everybody does hard work. Hard work doesn't mean great work until and unless results are seen. If you to physically hard work, but don't have any goals, you may not achieve anything. If you are working just to pay bills, you will only pay bills. You will not be able to achieve other things. 

And if you want to achieve big results then you must learn the trick. Galileo once said that one small coin can life the whole earth, if both are kept on opposite ends of pivot bar. You just need to keep earth near the pivot point while coin at far end. The leverage that the distance and pivot gives the coin makes it take far greater load than itself. You too must use the available leverage towards the completion of your goal. 

In today's technology world, internet is a big leverage. You can use it howsoever, only if you have the right guidance to use it. A habit of sending emails to prospects daily might take your message to as high as 1 lakh prospects if done on a regular basis. If you get very few results, then also you would be very very happy. You can leverage the time of other people to work on your goal. Remember that if you are not working on your goal, somebody else will make you work for his goal. So, you must be pretty clear of using other's time, money to create value by leveraging what you know.