Incredible India - Video of Karnataka Temples in Belur and Halebidu

#SridharPeddisetty #IncredibleIndia #Karnataka #Temples #Historic #WorldHeritageSites #Heritage #Hindu #Belur #Halebidu #PlacestoVisit
As part of Incredible India series, this video is of Temples in Belur and Halebidu in Hasana district of Karnataka, India.

Empower Your Team To Own Responsibilities

#SridharPeddisetty #Leadership #Management #Delegation #DelegationManagement #Agile #ProjectManagement #ScrumMaster #TeamWork   

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant - Robert Louis Stevenson

We all understand the word delegation but seldom put the art of delegation in play. I wrote an earlier blog post on Trust your team but make sure to verify, jest of which I am extending in this post. We need to learn the art of empowering our team to own responsibilities while creating the safety nets around those responsibilities so that even if they fail, they do not hurt themselves bad. Remember, it is often your best people that make the worst mistakes, because your best people do the most complex work. When we take so much pains to hire the best possible talent with the good intent to keep them in the team for long term, we might as well encourage them to pursue their ideas while giving them the tools they need to succeed.

The key to start empowering your team to own responsibilities is by making the list of tasks, which play to their strengths better and letting them own those tasks. Major constraint of not letting your team own tasks is because of the fear of losing control and facing consequences of the result. It is understandably difficult at times to think about pulling hand out of projects while letting the team own them but the fact is that the more your team feels that they are trusted to do their jobs, the more commitment and interest they will show in their work. Remember that you have hired smart people with right attitude and the best way to find whether you made the right decision or not is to just let them play it. More often the brightest of ideas come from the most unlikely sources and only way of knowing that is by empowering.  

Effective managers know from their experience that they can climb greater heights and achieve their professional goals only by delegating the work to their talented team of people.  By empowering, you are creating the next generation of leadership so always remember the quote "Do not count the number of followers you have but the number of leaders you created" 
Having shared this, there are certain tasks, which at times just cannot be delegated out. Jay Goltz has shared one such funny experience in his blog The one task I can’t seem to delegate and also there is this humorous piece

Mom: "Son, please go to the market and buy 1 bottle of milk. If they have eggs, bring 6”.  Son came back with 6 bottles of milk.   Mom: "Why the hell did you buy 6 bottles of milk?" Son:“Because they had eggs"

What are your thoughts on empowering your team to own responsibilities?  

Empower Your Team To Own Responsibilities was originally published in LinkedIn 

What is making you feel proud today?

#SridharPeddisetty #Leadership #Management #Innovation #IncredibleIndia #TheMakersOfThings #InnovationTechnology #FrugalInnovation  

Patriotism is a thing difficult to put into words. It is neither precisely an emotion nor an opinion, nor a mandate, but a state of mind -- a reflection of our own personal sense of worth, and respect for our roots. Love of country plays a part, but it's not merely love. Neither is it pride, although pride too is one of the ingredients. 
Patriotism is a commitment to what is best inside us all. And it's a recognition of that wondrous common essence in our greater surroundings -- our school, team, city, state, our immediate society -- often ultimately delineated by our ethnic roots and borders... but not always. 
Indeed, these border lines are so fluid... And we do not pay allegiance as much as we resonate with a shared spirit. 
We all feel an undeniable bond with the land where we were born. And yet, if we leave it for another, we grow to feel a similar bond, often of a more complex nature. Both are forms of patriotism -- the first, involuntary, by birth, the second by choice. 
Neither is less worthy than the other.―  Vera Nazarian 

Today I came across a YouTube video by the ‘The Makers of Things’, which is about India and how now is the time for India’s innovation, which finally seems to have come of age. Motto behind ‘The Makers of Things’ is to create a place that celebrates design and innovation!, where designers and innovators who are making beautiful things happen are featured - so they can spur more!.

Watching such videos always bring a lump in my throat thinking about how the perception about India and the innovative opportunities it presents is changing for the good. Social media has evolved in recent times and has its positives and not so positive impacts in society and arguments for and against are relative and subjective. One thing definitely positive about social media is the sharing of constructive knowledge and redefining the reach of the knowledge to a larger audience across the world. Sometime back Karl Moore had written a piece in Forbes The Best Way To Innovation An Important Lesson from India, in which Karl articulated it very well on why frugal innovation in India is a success story because of its limited financial resources. What Karl shared sometime back, India proved it by launching its ultra-budget spacecraft 'Mangalyaan' by becoming the first nation to succeed in sending a spacecraft into Mars' orbit on its very initial attempt.

India’s innovation success story is an idea whose time has come! 

What is making you feel proud today? was originally published in LinkedIn

Trust Your Team But Make Sure To Verify

#SridharPeddisetty, #Leadership, #Management, #Agile, #ScrumMaster, #AgileMethodologies, #AgileProjectManager #ProjectManager. 

One afternoon a wealthy manager was driving in his limousine when he saw two men along the roadside eating grass. Disturbed by the sight, he ordered his driver to stop and he got out to investigate. He asked one man "Why are you eating grass?" "We don't have any money for food," the poor man replied. "We have to eat grass." "Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I'll feed you" the manager said. "But sir, I have a wife and five children with me. They are over there, under that tree". "Bring them along," the manager replied. Turning to the other poor man he stated, "You come with us also." The second man, in a pitiful voice then said, "But sir, I also have a wife and seven children with me!" "Bring them all, as well," the manager answered. They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limousine was. Once underway, one of the poor fellows turned to mr. Manager and said, "Sir, you are too kind. Thank you for taking all of us with you." The manager replied, "Glad to do it. You'll really love my place; the grass is almost 1 meter high!"

Claus Langfred, a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis did a survey to measure levels of trust, self-monitoring, and autonomy among 71 self-managing teams of MBA students. In his survey, he found out these team members trusted each other and tended not to monitor one another much. As a result, they had relatively low awareness of each other’s activities, which affected performance and possibly hampering processes and coordination. 

In an Agile world where we encourage the teams to be self performing, role of a manager is more like a servant leader role. Its an important trait for the Scrum Master or Agile Project Manager to trust the self performing team to execute and deliver on business value but verifying the same with stage gates is essential. Each stage gate could include exit criteria, which the manager can standardize for the team to follow. Each stage within SDLC could also benefit from using SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs and Customers) model for mapping the deliverables with strategic goals while focusing on continuous improvement. 
Trusting your self performing team is important but its essential to verify that team is performing to its optimal level as a unit and not showing just individual brilliances, which can be counter productive for the end results. 

Stephen Covey has brilliantly put that "Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. Its the foundational principle that holds all relationships"   

How do you trust your team but verify? 

Trust Your Team But Make Sure To Verify was originally published in LinkedIn