What Matters Now - is to read, think and take action

What Matters Now is an ebook which you must read. It talks about the Things to THINK about and most importantly TAKE ACTION.

72 great thought leaders have contributed to this book by sharing what they are thinking about.

This is a brilliant compilation of articles being shared by Seth Godin and available for free.

You can download it here: What Matters Now

One single word, one single page each is all that took the great thinkers to share their thoughts -enough to provoke you, to make you ponder and to "shake things up".

A sneek peak into few of the articles:

Seth Godin on Generosity: If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get you more involved.

Jacqueline Novogratz on Dignity: Creating ways for people to solve their own problems isn’t just an opportunity in 2010. It is an obligation.

Howard Mann on Connected: We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

Rajesh Setty on Enrichment: You are only as rich as the enrichment you bring to the world around you.

Mark Hurst on Speaking: Be honest, be authentic, and speak from your passion. Yes, it means taking a risk. But the results might surprise you.

Many great thoughts from the following authors:

Read it. Share it. Take ACTION.

What have you learnt today?

At work you are expected to successfully deliver every task, every project, on time every time. If you fail once, you may possibly not get the chance again. Every piece of work you deliver carries with it the 'attributes' - was it precisely what was required, was it delivered on time; have YOU added value with YOUR contribution? Take a moment to think - your deliverables show your qualities. If you were the stakeholder would you say "Wow!" by the stuff you delivered?

To continuously live up and exceed the expectation of your customers and stakeholders, continuous learning is key. Learning the skills and gaining the knowledge to deliver 'Wow! quality work' is an essential component of an individual's growth. Always remember, if you can't live up to the expectation or even deliver more than what is expected, then someone else will!

Are you learning to live up to these expectations?

What have you learnt today? What have you learnt in the last one week, a month, an year?

What have you learnt which will help deliver more for your customers?

Action:

• Create a learning log. Write down what you learn every day. If you are not learning, it will show!
• Have a learning goal. What should you learn to deliver more and add more value to your work? Anticipate your future deliverables (short term and long term), analyze the industry trend, understand the customers' need and their business and design your own learning plan.
• Set timelines by which you would achieve these specific learning goals. Smart learning in quick time is the necessity of today.
• Track your learning on a regular basis. Are you progressing in the right path and on time?

You grow not by years of experience but by the knowledge you acquire and implement.

Keep learning. Keep growing.

#Th!nkTweet: Bite-sized lessons for a fast paced world!

I read Rajesh Setty's latest book #Th!nkTweet: Bite-sized lessons for a fast paced world! and re-read it the very next day.

It is packed with wisdom and the bite-sized lessons will provoke you to think and think again. The benefit of a book comes only when we take a learning out of it and then practice the insights in our daily life. This book shows the path to immense learning through 'bite-sized lessons', all written as tweets within 140 charecters. Indeed, Rajesh proves here that 140 charecters is enough to make us think.

This may be a small book which would take you just about an hour to read through but do not judge the book by its thickness. It is a book which should be read and re-read, to think, introspect and put the learning into practice. In todays world where time is most valuable, this book has a very high ROI for the time you spend on it. The tweets will provoke your thought and let you introspect on the way you live today!

Foreword by Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) says it all in a tweet - "#Th!nkTweet is a cool little book filled with twinsights, twumor, and twinfluence of Twitter."

I take another learning from this book 'project': Rajesh has been into tweeting since December 2008, that was about six months back, only. It is inspiring to see how he has been able to leverage the twitter platform to come up with his idea of publishing tweets in a book form. You can do wonders if you have the vision and you know where exactly you want to go.

You can follow Rajesh in twitter at @UpbeatNow

You can buy the book at Happy About (publisher) or Amazon.

To read more on this book and to follow the buzz around it, check Rajesh Setty's website. If you enjoy the book, let others know.

Thanks again Rajesh for this great book and wish all the success.

Enjoy reading and quick learning!

(Book cover photo source: rajeshsetty.com)

Mind Mapping - capturing your thoughts freely

Mind Mapping is a technique by which we can capture our thoughts and logically put them together based on their dependencies, relationships or associations. If you have not used this technique, this post would be useful to introduce you to the power of mind mapping and the value you may get by using the mind mapping technique.

When we brainstrom to solve a problem, to capture the approach to a new project or even managing our To-Do list, we probably record our thoughts on the whiteboard, on a notepad, in a document or spreadsheet. I do find it a bit restricted to logically document my thoughts when I record in spredsheets. In turn I risk to not capture an idea. Its difficult to record the free flowing ideas when limited by a few rows and columns. A whiteboard ofcourse makes it easier, but does not allow to quickly share with my colleagues who are located around the world. The alternative to this is to capture my thoughts in a Mind Mapping software.

To see what Mind Mapping is all about, watch this video. Here Tony Buzan, who is known to be the inventor of modern mindmapping speaks about this powerful technique.

(courtesy: iMindMap at YouTube)

There are many Mind Mapping tools available on the internet. I personally use a open source mind mapping software, FreeMind. Its easy to document my thoughts logically and then export it to a spreadsheet, a document or even in a pdf, if I do need to share my ideas with someone not using this tool.

Hope this helps to capture your thoughts with ease and without limitation and increase your productivity and creativity.

Servant Leadership

Last week I heard about Servant Leadership from one of my colleagues. The concept made me interested and I went on to do some reading. This leadership philosophy has resonated in me and I am in search of a deeper insight of this in today's corporate world.

Servant Leadership is a leadership philosophy where you serve first and then be the leader. This philosophy was presented by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970 where he said:

"The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature." (courtesy - greenleaf.org)

A servant leader is identified of having the following charecteristics:

1. Calling - a calling to serve others
   
2. Listening - a keen interest to listen to others views
   
3. Empathy - an ability to understand others situation
   
4. Healing - to emotionally support when things are not all well for someone
   
5. Awareness - an awareness of the surrounding and being informed of the happenings
   
6. Persuasion - others work for you because they want to and not because they have to
   
7. Conceptualization - an environment to encourage others to share ideas openly
   
8. Foresight - an ability to anticipate the future happenings and trends as much as possible
   
9. Stewardship - to work for the larger benefit of the society
   
10. Growth - help others grow
    
11. Building Community - develop a sense of being in a community among the team members

There is a sense of calmness and selflessness in the leadership approach. Collaboration, empowerment and foresight are so necessary in today's corporate life. Servant leadership talks of all this and more. It encourages a sense of bonding and a spirit of team work to achieve organizational goals where many are surely more 'powerful' than one.

Does Servant Leadership appeal to you? How many of the above charecteristics do you practice? Are you a servant leader?

Thanks for reading.

About Beyond Weekend blog

Why is the blog named Beyond Weekend?

I have heard so many people say with a sigh of relief, "Thank God its Friday" and with an excitement in the voice, "Have a good weekend". At the same time I know of "Monday morning blues".

This made me think. Are we not so happy during the week? Are we stressed and do not enjoy what we are doing at work? Well, yes often we are much happier and relaxed during the weekend than the weekdays because we are not really excited about what we are doing at work. There would surely be a few more reasons. Personally I have always felt and believed that the quality of work and productivity would hugely increase if we enjoy what we do and reduce the stress at work. If this is true for a large population of employees it would have a significant impact on a team or even an organization.

Hence the thought came of having this blog, where I capture my learning and share my random thoughts about being happy at work. In turn, I believe, we would achieve success and contribute towards having a more profitable organization. In the process we develop or show traits of certain attitudes which emphasizes our personal brand.

I related to the Friday evening feelings and named this blog Beyond Weekend. How would a Monday morning be if we can have the inner joy and excitement of the Friday evening? Can we achieve it and contribute to let others achieve it as well?

My blog is in search of answers and documents my learning. I also end up sharing my view points.

What is Beyond Weekend?
My viewpoint to manage the complex work life with a goal where we look forward to be in office on Monday mornings and enjoy every moment of each work day.

Some of my initial posts where I gave a structure to my thoughts can be found in these posts:

• Background of this blog
• Who should read this
• Beyond Weekend approach
  

About Me (after a why and what, the who behind this blog)

Learning is key to our growth and I always consider myself a student of leadership and management.

I started my career as an IT Systems Administrator and worked on various technologies and managed systems and networks. My work allowed me to interact with various people around the world from different cultural, academic and technical backgrounds which enabled me to learn a lot. Some of this would naturally be reflected in my blogs.

Currently I am responsible for IT Service Delivery in a leading global IT organization.


Thank You,
for showing an interest and reading my musings. I highly appreciate the time you have taken to read through the pages on my blog and wish it was atleast a bit useful. I would be grateful if you would express your thoughts and make this blog an interactive platform for us to learn from each others view points. Leave a comment below the posts or you may directly contact me here.


Disclaimer: All the views I express in this blog are my own and not of any organization I am associated with or had been associated with in the past.
Wherever I have quoted someone's valued work or a blog or website I have pointed to the source wherever possible.