Some key success vectors

 

• Rigor in planning [execution and keeping our commitments 

• Delivering solutions, deployable at scale from Day- 1 

• Evolving/ Augmentin our metrics, where warranted 

• Teams which enable each of us become the best that we can be 

Leadership lessons from GeorgeKutty - Drishyam 2

 

IIM-B - tag line - Tejasvi navadhitamastu

Om Saha navavatu; Saha nau Bhunaktu; Saha viryam karavavahai; tejasvi navadhitamastu; Ma vidvishavahai; Om Shantih; Shantih; Shantih: The meaning of this  verse is: May God protects us. May we both enjoy the results. May we attain strength together. Let learning illuminate us! Let us not show contempt for each other. Let there be peace, and peace, and peace to all. This Upanishad is also called Kaathakopanishad and belongs to the Taittairiya School of  the Yajurveda. 

Identify — and Hire — Lifelong Learners

 Talent management has undergone a massive overhaul, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Working environments, business priorities, and new technologies have been adopted with prodigious urgency. Hiring and onboarding have become substantially remote activities. In January 2020 — before Covid had even become a pandemic — the World Economic Forum called for a global reskilling revolution, and firms now require different skills of their workforces, including resilience, adaptability, digital, design, and interpersonal skills.

These changes have been a challenge for job candidates and employers alike. But I believe that there’s a simple way to bring some much-needed clarity and guidance — one which adds value all the way along the employee lifecycle, from hiring to managing performance.

The secret is to ask of people a simple question: How do you learn?

This is not about simplistic learning preferences (such as schedules and modalities) or broadly discredited learning styles (such as being a visual or aural learner). This is about an individual’s personal system for updating, improving, and sharing her knowledge and skills. Does the job candidate you’re considering have such a system? And, for that matter, do you?

This may be the most pertinent question one can ask of a current or future employee. Future performance of the individual is just as much a function of high-caliber, systematic, intentional skills development as it is of past achievements and qualifications, the traditional fare of job interviews. And the capability and much of the value of a company is, in turn, a function of the collective skills of its workforce.

Lifelong learning is now roundly considered to be an economic imperative and “the only sustainable competitive advantage.” Job candidates and employees who consider, update, and improve their skills are the high performers, especially over the longer term. Pressing ourselves on the question of how we learn brings a hard, pragmatic edge to the important but nebulous notion of growth mindset.

Let’s consider the question’s application to two key stages of the employee lifecycle: hiring and performance management.

Hiring and getting hired

Suppose the question were asked by default during the screening process. Convincing answers would indicate high levels of curiosity, organization, and method.

As a hiring manager:

• Take care to be inclusive and open-minded about what counts as learning. This is partly to be able to appreciate cultural and personal differences. It’s also to recognize that there is a dizzying proliferation of content from which one can learn: courses, books, people, poems, performance support tools, songs, films, conversations, observations, reflections, memories, and more. How does the candidate go about making sense of all of this? How does she face up to content overload? How does she select what’s most relevant and then slice, dice, and digest it in a way that improves her feeling of fulfillment and level of performance over the long term?
• Ask the candidate about something they’ve recently learned and how they could apply it in the role for which you are considering them.
• Be prepared to have the same question be asked of you. Show an awareness of the skills deemed to be of particularly high value at the firm — this is typically a list of 20 to 100 skills, behaviors, and values, defined with care.

As a candidate:

• Ask about the learning culture and facilities for learning at the firm. This will help understand more about the environment you may be walking into, and will help demonstrate your interest in learning to your prospective employer.
• Don’t wait to be asked about how you learn. Volunteer your convincing answer at the right moment in the conversation.
• Be prepared to answer any and all of the above questions for hiring managers.

Performance management

The question “How do you learn?” can also reap rewards in the appraisal process. As well as assessing and rewarding past performance, a properly conducted appraisal will identify skills gaps to close and strengths to reinforce. And the progressive employer will have curated the right learning content to achieve this for their workforce, along with intelligent technologies to distribute the right learning to the right learner. They may also incorporate the question into performance management software, so it is fully embedded for everyone. The question usefully tees up the conversation for the next appraisal: So what did you learn?

A corollary of all this is that individuals should themselves ensure they have such a system in place to reliably and consistently develop their skills and thinking. Even within a progressive and innovative corporate culture, responsibility for learning ultimately lies with the learner.

For this we all, as individuals, need to develop and carry around with us more of a curiosity about skills. Which are the skills of one’s best self? Which of those are the real differentiating strengths which are not only important in your current role, but to your entire career? Where do the gaps lie? How do we make abstract concepts such as communication, leadership, and resilience more concrete? How should we quantify and calibrate and talk about our skills?

Skills are the lingua franca of talent management and run through all the important documents of the employee lifecycle — from resumés to job descriptions to learning content to appraisals. We need to develop more of a skills intelligence, as individuals and as organizations.

There are many practices that may help the learner, including but not limited to:

• Developing positive learning habits. A habit starts out as an activity. Choose activities which suits your personality, lifestyle, and working pattern so that they are more likely to develop into enduring habits. This could be anything from reading an article each morning, to a timeboxed hour of learning per week, to reading a book a month or taking 15 minutes for reflective journaling in the evening.
• Improving performance through deliberate practice. Deconstruct the skill you’re trying to develop, and take proactive and specific measures to improve each component part. This practice stands in contrast to just repeating performance in the same way each time.
• Maintaining a “learned” and “to-learn” list, which stays with you throughout your career, not just during your tenure at your current employer. This can be a simple spreadsheet or a Google doc. What’s important is that it covers what you learned, where and when you learned it, and ideally how you’ve applied it (written retrospectively). The list should enable you to answer an otherwise onerous question like: What were you learning six months ago?
• Utilizing a 2×2 matrix approach to help you choose the right skills to focus on now. Few of us have much time to learn, so we should prioritize our endeavors by considering evaluating the benefits of applying a new skill against the cost of acquiring it.

The world and the workplace have changed. The skills we need to function and flourish have correspondingly changed, and so we need to bring them into a smarter, sharper focus to know what they are and to seek them out proactively, persistently, and methodically. One way of doing that is by asking ourselves and others: How do you learn?

What to Think About Before Asking for Help

 

We’ve all been there: you’re doing your work, get stuck, and need help — but you’re worried about bothering your coworkers or asking an obvious question. The first step to asking for help isn’t to ask — it’s to confirm if your question is worth asking. This means doing your homework. Is this something you could feasibly learn by yourself? If not, the next step is to identify the least disruptive way to gather the information you need from someone else. Ask yourself three questions: Who is the best person to ask? When is the right time? And where is the right place? Often, the ideal time will be when you’re already talking. So, if you’re meeting together, try asking, “Would you have a minute when we’re done to answer a few questions?” If you’re in touch via email or instant messenger, consider adding on your questions to an existing conversation. And don’t just make your request without context; you want the person to know you value their time so share the work you’ve done to help yourself before you decided to approach them. Finally, if they’re able to give you the answer you're looking for, have a system in place that will help you hold on to the information and access it later. You don't want to have to ask for help with the same issue twice.

Build Meaningful Connections with Your Colleagues

 

If you see networking and work interactions as purely transactional, you’re likely missing out on the deeper connections that are often integral to career success and growth. But how can you actually bring your authentic self to these professional interactions? Start by trying to think of everyone you come across as a real-life connection, not just a work contact. Shifting your mindset in this way will help you start to build genuine relationships. Show interest and be present with your colleagues — even when you don’t need something from them. Listening is the best tool for this. Pay attention to other people’s interests and passions, and follow up when you come across something — a podcast, an article, an internet meme — that reminds you of them. Finally, set boundaries. Bringing your true self to work means being vulnerable, and not everyone needs, or deserves, to see that side of you. You get to decide where and how you express your authentic self. Save your energy for the relationships that you believe will bring you energy and joy.

Avoid These 3 Pitfalls When Leading Organizational Change

 

Leading an organizational transformation is hard. If you’ve got a major change on the horizon (or if you're currently leading one that's stuck in a ditch), you need to be aware of three common pitfalls — and how to avoid them. Don't underestimate the scope of the work. Executing a transformation at scale typically requires more time and coordination than leaders expect. To counter this, make sure you have realistic expectations. Take an incremental approach to the overall goal by launching a series of small-scale projects and initiatives led by distinct teams. And be sure that all of these related initiatives — and the people who lead them — are aligned, communicate effectively, and avoid taking on overlapping or conflicting work. Don’t overestimate your employees' capacity to execute your vision while continuing to carry out their existing day-to-day responsibilities. Listen for feedback about their ability to deliver. Be ready to adapt accordingly. Don’t hide why this transformation is important to you. Be transparent and express why you believe the organization should move in this new direction. You want to be a leader who inspires trust throughout the transition.

How to Present to a Hybrid Audience

 

Keeping your audience engaged during a presentation is always a challenge, but it’s even harder when some people aren’t in the room. What can you do to make your hybrid presentations more inclusive, energetic, and effective? Here are a few tips. Require cameras to be on. This will allow you to engage visually with everyone. To level the playing field even further, consider asking in-person participants to bring their laptops and turn their cameras on. Emotionally engage remote participants. Greet virtual participants personally at the beginning of the session and continue to address them throughout the presentation. Make direct eye contact. Begin by looking deliberately at the camera to send the message that the people not in the room are equally important. Throughout the presentation, switch back and forth between making eye contact with those in the room and returning your focus back to the remote participants. Foster collaboration. Have virtual and in-person participants work together, rather than splitting the group into in-person and remote breakout rooms.

This tip is adapted from “How to Nail a Hybrid Presentation,” by Sarah Gershman and Rae Ringel

Feeling Overwhelmed? Avoid These Mistakes

 

When you feel overwhelmed, the way you react can actually make things worse. Here are five common, self-sabotaging mistakes to watch out for — and how to avoid them: You think you don’t have time for actions that might help you. Stop waiting for an ideal moment, and do something to help yourself immediately, such as finding a therapist, taking a day off to rest, or calling up a friend. You don’t use your unconscious mind enough. It’s unreasonable to expect to be focused all the time. Try taking a walk and letting your mind drift and see what solutions emerge. You interpret feeling overwhelmed as a weakness. Being hard on yourself will only lead you to procrastinate or become more perfectionistic. Replace your self-criticism with compassionate self-talk. You default to your traditional approaches and defenses. Our strengths may not always work to our advantage; for example, thoughtfulness can become overthinking, or high standards can lead to perfectionism. Be mindful of your instinctive reactions in order to stay flexible in your approach to problem solving. You withdraw from your support system. Find ways to connect with people even when you’ve got limited emotional energy.

Power cycle via CLI - Raritan

 https://cdn.raritan.com/download/PX/v1.5.20/DPX-0T-v1.5.20-E.pdf

Switching an Outlet 

The set command can turn an outlet on or off. 

Turning an Outlet On Using the keyword on turns the outlet on. 

clp:/->set /system1/outlet<outlet number> powerState=on

where <outlet number> is the number of the outlet. 

Turning an Outlet Off Using the keyword off turns the outlet off. 

clp:/->set /system1/outlet<outlet number> powerState=off

where <outlet number> is the number of the outlet. 

Challenges