Effectiveness
Habits
Peter
Drucker, the father of modern management science has stated that no human being
is born effective. Effectiveness is a
learnable skill and has to be cultivated by people through conscious,
deliberate, consistent efforts. By cultivating
this habit a person is able to optimize the utilization of the available
resources and professional, social spheres of life.
For
developing and making the effectiveness habit, one needs to adhere to the 4 D +
1 C. Principles. These Principles are:
1. Desire
2. Decide
3. Discipline
4. Determination
5. Consistency
In
the Desire phase one need to truly want to master the effectiveness
habits. The desire has to be deeply
felt, wanted, and cherished.
Then
comes the ‘Decide’ phase wherein one knows the ‘What’ , ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of the
subject and decides to master the same with a fixed time frame effort to master
the habits. The discipline has to be
self-discipline and not due to external compulsions. Being disciplined means you would still do
the Pre decided practices even when you do not feel like doing it. The fourth step is Self-Determination which
means ‘come what may’ you are tenacious enough to pursue and achieve the preset
goals. You pursue things and take them
to the logical end, irrespective of the circumstances and other extraneous
factors.
The
last quality required is “Consistency” which means doing it literally every day. A management saying says that any practices
that you do consistently, even imperfectly would yield outstanding results.
The Six Habits of Truly Effective people as
per my research and experience are:
1. Integrity
2. Constant
Time Discipline
3. Laser
Sharp Prioritizing
4. Knowing
and Working on Your Strengths.
5. Being
Result-oriented
6. Pursuing
Excellence In Decision Making.
1.
Integrity
An effective person always endeavors to honor
his word. Once he gives his word, he is
committed to keeping his word. This
means he does whatever he promised to do, at the time he promised.
Also in Integrity he always has an
Empowering Context towards life which means he always views every situation of
life from a viewpoint of possibility
thinking or what is good and positive in
a given situation. As a consequence, he
is always filled with Positive, Constructive, and Progressive energy.
2.
Time
Discipline
Time is that unique resource which is
irreplaceable, once spent cannot be retrieved.
Also our life is nothing but a congregation of time.
The first misunderstanding that needs to
be cleared is the fact that you cannot manage time as time is ever moving and
passing and waits for no one. One cannot
hold, stop, and store time. Time once
spent is spent forever. Time spent is
actually Life spent. The First
understanding one needs to get is that your need to manage, yourself vis-a-vis
time. For that firstly one needs self-audit
and know how we are going to spend this precious resource ‘time’ now. How much of it is in line with our life
objectives and goal? How much of our
time is going towards non-productive endeavors
.
Awareness
is always the first step in bringing about positive change in any sphere of life. From ‘Awareness’ follows ‘Understanding’ and
from that we can ‘Recondition’ our actions towards the Desired directions.
Self time- audit would give us access to the
non- productive usage of time wherein we can give up unproductive work and
replace it by more productive use of time.
3.
Laser
Sharp Prioritizing
There
is a Potent saying: “Focus on the vital few
instead of the trivial many.”
The
famous Pareto’s 80-20 principles rightly states that 80% of the results are
caused by the 20% of the causes or efforts.
We
need to constantly work on our ability to be able to know our priority tasks in
relation to goals and focus on the same to get the optimum results.
Many
a time it is seen that during the Planning phase we do enlist the priority
tasks but during the course of the day one gets distracted and loses the focus. This leads to non-optimum results.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that
“Where the Focus goes, Energy flows and the results manifest.”
4.
Knowing
and Working on Strengths
Each
individual is unique, able, capable and a force to reckon with. Each of us has been
blessed with certain unique qualities, natural talents. We need to know about them, acknowledge and
appreciate the same. Also we need to
keep on working on those abilities to
produce the desired results. It is a proven fact that if you concentrate on
your unique talent you are able to
touch excellence very easily.
Also
there are areas in which you do not have talent. Such areas one should delegate to persons who have talent. In this way one can optimize one’s
opportunities, resources and talents.
Also one’s endeavor should be to keep on strengthening one’s
strength and weaken one’s weaknesses. This is a sure shot way of emerging winner in
all
circumstances.
5.
Being
Result Oriented
Even
though in the larger spiritual viewpoint everything is a game and we are
playing different roles with no real significance. Nevertheless to make the
game interesting we do have to have definite goals with predetermined
Milestones and targets.
As a
consequence every player should be totally involved and give one’s 100%. Also one has to periodically keep on
reviewing as to what results have been accomplished. We need to keep on reviewing whether our
actions are producing the desired outcome or not. In the periodical revision
one needs to do course correction of one’s action to achieve the desired
results.
It
is the desired results which gives us entitlement to rewards.
We
need to constantly keep ourselves away from giving Reason trap. As productivity experts rightly say in life
you either have Reasons or Results, the choice is ours.
6. Pursuing Excellence in Decision-Making
It is said that wherever you are in life
is the consequence of the decisions you have taken in the past. Decision-making is an ability which like any other
skill is learnable. There is a science
and an art to this skill.
The scientific steps of decision making
are:
a) First
know what is the situation, challenge or problem.
b) What
are the causes for the situation, challenges, and problem.
c) Collect
maximum information about the situation.
d) Analyze
and find out the various alternatives.
e) Choose
the best alternative.
f) After
that, Act on the chosen alternative with full passion to get the designed
result.
The
above scientific step needs to be followed in a disciplined fashion over and
over again in various situations till you attain proficiency and mastery over
the whole process.
Also
it has to be realized that while taking decisions dealing with Human beings, it can not only be on the basis of cut and dry
facts.
The
human element of emotions, feelings needs to be considered and kept in mind.
Effectiveness
Busters
Earlier,
we learnt as to which are the six Effectiveness Habits.
In
this chapter we would look at the opposite of what we delved in the last chapter. Here we shall look at the habits which thwart
effectiveness or in other words, habits which decimate one’s effectiveness.
The effectiveness Busters are
1. Procrastination
2. Pseudo
rationalization
3. Unwillingness
to take Responsibility.
Procrastination
It
is said that 70% of human beings are afflicted by this disease. This habit makes a person postpone doing
things. He delays action and as a
consequence fails to produce results.
This
habit basically entails avoiding action due to carelessness, casualness or
laziness.
The
remedy for this effectiveness buster is to get into Action immediately. Once you have collected all the information
pertaining to a given situation, analyze the information or situation
thoroughly, coming out with the various possible alternatives, and then choose
the best alternative out of those. Once
the best alternative is found out, act on it forthwith with total
commitment.
In
life, acting at the right time on the right opportunity is what makes a person
successful.
The second Effectiveness buster is Pseudo
Rationalization. This habit is closely
connected to the first effectiveness buster, Procrastination. They both have cause to effect relationship.
Procrastination, many a time is the result of pseudo rationalization.
In pseudo rationalization a person gives,
fabricates, imaginary, fictitious reason and justifies, or convinces himself
for not taking initiative or action.
Pseudo
(Not real) Rationalization -- Reasoning or justification.
As we know our mind is a big soap opera
writer. Mind’s basic function is to protect,
keep one safe and secure. Hence whenever
one is faced with a situation which needs one to take Risk or go beyond one’s
comfort zone, the Mind invariably comes out with some immediate inner
conversation as to why one should not do it.
Every
successful performer should see through this game of the mind and think
rationally and see the situation for what it is and take judicious action.
As
they say in life we either get “Reason or Results” - the choice is ours.
It
is very easy to find reasons for not doing something which may look arduous and
challenging. A typical experience that
all of us undergo is that of getting up in the morning to go for physical work
out. As soon as the alarm clock rings,
the mind comes out with a reason like you have had a long day yesterday or have
a very hard day in front of you etc. etc.
Under the pretext of these reasons, the mind urges you to go to sleep
again instead of going out for the physical workout.
On
the spur of the moment, the physical workout may look to be painful. But once through with the inertia, you get
out of the bed and go for the physical workout. You then feel lighter, healthier, and
happier as a result of your breaking this basic instinct of pseudo-rationalization.
Unwillingness to
Take Responsibility
The third but the most fundamental reason for
many people not growing, developing and progressing in life is this habit.
Most
of the people shirk responsibility. For
most of them taking responsibility appears to be a big burden, discomfort,
hardship, etc. Not taking responsibility
appears comfortable but in reality this comfort is an illusion.
This illusionary comfort is actually lethargy,
stagnancy and non-liveliness.
The
truth is when a person takes Responsibility he immediately experiences
power. The sense of responsibility opens
pathways to action and to look for Possibility thinking. This is the first step towards progress,
growth, success and fulfillment. It is
also said that taking Responsibility gives one Freedom; both internally and
externally. The moment a person takes
Responsibility for any situation; there is a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership automatically gives
the person the consciousness of ‘wanting’ to do something instead of being in
the consciousness of ‘having’ to do or forced to do something.
When
a person is in action from the ‘Wanting’ to do consciousness, he experiences
‘Effortlessness’ or freedom from within.
In the external world, whenever a person is
Responsible and is coming from that consciousness, he is more of a self-
starter and does not need to be told, supervised or monitored. He takes whatever action that needs to be
taken in any given situation. Hence he
has freedom as nobody is there hovering over him dictating what he needs to do.
Hence he experiences external freedom as well. Taking responsibility equals
power, freedom, growth, development, fulfillment, success and happiness.
On
the other hand, when a person shuns responsibility his first causality is his
motive to take action. This inaction
kicks off the vicious circle of lethargy, laziness, stagnancy and a feeling of
powerlessness.
All the above factors are anti-thesis to
performance, progress and prosperity.
Hence
the tendency of people to shun away from Responsibility is one of the biggest
Effectiveness busters which need to be broken.
When
a person lives his life from a principle that ‘I am totally responsible for
everything in my life and also that I alone have to be blamed for any failures
or setbacks’, then he instantly gets the Power to act and remedy and redress
the situation.
