Be better at coaching and mentoring

Thanks to the 100 coaches initiative by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, I was able to crystallize some thoughts on coaching/mentoring based on my past experience and what I learned from the sessions.  I am sharing this as part of my Pay It Forward contribution, feel free to use this, adapt this and share this. This can be applied in business, social and home situations. Do not coach or mentor a person who is not willing to change! It is all around wasted effort and can only result in frustration. This is not to be confused with motivating a person to reach beyond their imaginary limits. 68% of all dialogues are either about proving the superiority of the speaker or inferiority of a second or third person. Significant productivity and time savings are available if these two topics can be avoided. We all have inflated confidence in what we know. Approaching topics with true openness can help in yielding remarkable results beyond limits of current knowledge. Behavioral changes are one of the toughest changes an adult can willingly go through; their environment and stakeholders are a critical enabler for such changes to succeed. A successful person is a lot more receptive for coaching and mentoring than a struggling person. 100% of the successful athletes and sportspersons have great coaches helping them. Feedforward is more impactful than feedback, given that it focuses on how to succeed in the future! Feedforward should be positive, simple and focused. Key leadership traits to develop - ask for more…

Continue ReadingBe better at coaching and mentoring

Business Fundamentals – Design for Value

At its core, business is a venture that provides value to a customer. Value can be to satisfy a need, to bridge a gap or to increase comfort or pride. A customer is paying the business for the perceived value from the product or service offered by the business. It is critical for businesses to have a clear understanding of customer perception of value and designing its operations to be well aligned with this perception thereby ensuring long-term customer loyalty and profitability. Effective business leaders invest time to clearly understand customer’s ongoing perception of the value and proactively incorporate changing trends into the product/service design. The word ongoing is the key here, given that customer preference and perception is bound to change with time and trends in the industry. To be really on top of the value game and to differentiate from the alternatives available for the customer, business leaders should approach value by designing a holistic end to end customer experience through every moment of truth interaction. For those unclear of the term, ‘Moment of truth’ is every moment when a customer/user interacts with a business, brand, product or service to form or change an impression about that particular business, brand, product or service. So this includes advertising, initial contact (phone/website/app/sales person/or other), a positive purchasing experience, the product or service experience, customer service and ease to return for future services. It is important to think through each of the moments of truth that a customer will experience while connecting with…

Continue ReadingBusiness Fundamentals – Design for Value

Fundamentals of being Good

 We all are born with a concept of being good! Given the trials of daily life, it is helpful to have a quick reminder on the fundamentals of being consciously good. At Mindful Solutions our usual focus is on being good in business,  this time let's try to look at being good holistically.Being Good to Self:Three areas where we need to be mindful on a daily basis is how well are we taking care of the three components of our self - our body, our mind and our soul. Body – Let's be more cognizant of what we eat, ensure adequate physical activity and find useful hacks that can be moulded into routines that we can follow habitually as part of our daily life. A good example is a four-minute Tabata workout every time before you shower!Mind – It is important to focus on our mind to ensure we are fostering positivity while controlling the primal urges for protection from perceived threats. While the mind is naturally wired to focus on the negative - coming from our ancestors need to survive in very hostile conditions, we need to reaffirm to our selves that we live in much safer times today. The best approach here is to be grateful for the success and learnings of the past, build affirmations to program our mind positively and to focus today on taking actions towards clear future goals. An active focus on learning is an important element of keeping a sharp mind.Soul – We all have a spiritual element within us…

Continue ReadingFundamentals of being Good

How to select a business coach – like a doctor or a personal trainer?

Why is a business consultant or a business coach critical to the success of a business?Having spent over 8 figure budgets on hiring consultants, I know that consultant can add significant value or act as a sinkhole where money disappears. There seems to be no middle ground here, as its always either very good or very bad. With many success stories of hiring consultants, I would like to share my approach on identifying the right consultants and managing them, thereby adding significant value to your business.Given that we are a business consulting firm focused on small and mid-sized business, I would like to highlight that this article shares more of my thinking behind starting Mindful Solutions but is not intended to act as a business pitch. This is more like how I would go about choosing one if I had the need todaySo is it a doctor or a personal fitness trainer?This depends more on the reason you are seeking a consultant. If you are having a specific problem or concern area to address, use the 'when you are sick, go to a doctor' approach to identify the best fit business consultant. If you are seeking someone to help you grow or scale into an interesting opportunity, then you seek someone like a personal trainer to help you successfully see you through your journey towards that opportunity or goal. The doctor approach:Some of the key factors you may want to consider are:Education - initial and ongoing, is the person having an adequate academic…

Continue ReadingHow to select a business coach – like a doctor or a personal trainer?

4th industrial revolution – Age of Convergence

We are at the dawn of the biggest, fastest and most impactful transformation in human history. Given its incredible opportunities and scale of disruption, it is critical for all of us to know the nine key tenets of these changes, start preparing ourselves to lead these changes as applicable in our own world and succeed. Fourth industrial revolution unlike the prior three, will be broad based in its scale where different technology trends converge to bring results previously unthinkable. The pace of change will be at times scary given our ability to simulate accurately and rapidly prototype. Progress as we know happens through a simple three step process, a) analyse the problem, b) develop solutions, c) operationalise and optimise. Let’s look at how some of the major technology trends will converge for the next phase of tremendous progress; a quantum leap for humanity. Analysing the problem, is less of a problem now given these three recent trends: Machine Learning and big data solutions are being applied to analyse vast amounts of data (created over the past decades), helping us to discover finer nuances of big problems as well as to recognize problems we were not previously aware of. From analysing machine performance, economic trends, weather patterns, environmental data, animal behavior, human habits and many more, we understand problems a lot better today than ever before. Gaming and expansion of human analytical skills – More than 30,000 years of time is spent every day playing digital games! Strategy based games are scaling up the analytical…

Continue Reading4th industrial revolution – Age of Convergence