Nagesh Belludi

A Superb Example of Crisis Leadership in Action

May 4, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It is in a crisis that leaders show their mettle. The New York Times notes,

The master class on how to respond [to a crisis] belongs to Jacinda Ardern, the 39-year-old prime minister of New Zealand. On March 21, when New Zealand still had only 52 confirmed cases, she told her fellow citizens what guidelines the government would follow in ramping up its response. Her message was clear: “These decisions will place the most significant restrictions on New Zealanders’ movements in modern history. But it is our best chance to slow the virus and to save lives.” And it was compassionate: “Please be strong, be kind and united against Covid-19.”

Our political leaders’ responses to the current COVID-19 crisis are particularly instructive about how leaders should act in a crisis:

Lead from the front. Initiate quick, bold, and responsible action, even when it carries political risk. Don’t be overcome by panic.
Think the crisis through. Weigh your options carefully, and then make the call confidently. Stay focused. Don’t let stress impede your problem-solving capabilities.
Avert an information vacuum. Any gap in the available information will be filled by guesswork and speculation.
Provide an accurate picture of what’s going on. Be transparent and honest right from the beginning. Acknowledging the gravity of the situation and being clear about how you’re going to collectively address the crisis leaves your constituencies with a sense of confidence in your message.
Choose your words carefully. Don’t create a false sense of security. Avoid making throwaway comments that might be misconstrued.
Communicate often. Fine-tune your message. Update your analysis and reaffirm your assurance of support. Keeping everyone in the loop diffuses fears and uncertainties.
Empower employees to be part of the solution. Invite and respond to employees’ feedback and concerns. They’ll need to know they’re being heard.

Idea for Impact: When a crisis hits, constituencies fall back on their leaders for information, answers, confidence, and direction. Set the appropriate tone for the organizational response by being supportive, factual, transparent, open-minded, calm, and decisive.

Inspirational Quotations #839

May 3, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever…
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer)

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
—William James (American Philosopher)

Perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Hungarian-American Psychologist)

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
—Harper Lee (American Novelist)

Big words seldom accompany good deeds.
—Danish Proverb

To live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing—here is perfection of character.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.
—George Santayana (Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher)

We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

A docile disposition will, with application, surmount every difficulty.
—Marcus Manilius (Roman Poet)

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (American First Lady)

Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Reproof on her lips, but a smile in her eyes.
—Samuel Lover (Irish Writer, Artist, Songwriter)

Comfort is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable”.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

How to Kick That Bad Habit

April 30, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin’s The Book of Jewish Values (2011) cites advice from a 12th-century rabbinic text:

Set aside a sum of money that you will give away if you allow yourself to be angered. Be sure that the amount you designate is sufficient to force you to think twice before you lose your temper.

One way to kick a bad habit is to pledge to give money to a cause that you hate should you fail in your goal.

For instance, entrust a trusted friend (or the website StickK) with $200 and ask her to keep an eye on your goal to eat mindfully and lose weight. If you’re a lifelong Democrat, pledge to have your friend give away your $200 to the “Trump for President 2020” campaign should you fail to meet your predetermined criteria.

Idea for Impact: Try this negative reinforcement technique to inculcate some self-discipline. Make it motivating—designate to give away an amount that hurts or to a cause that you loathe!

Endnote: The text above is an extract from Rabbi Avrohom Chaim Feuer Reishit’s Ramban: A Letter for the Ages (1989,) an anthology of the works of Ramban (c.1194–1270,) fully Moses ben Nahman or Naḥmanides, a Spanish religious leader and rabbi.

Why You’ll Work Better with Plenty of Breaks during This COVID-19 Lockdown

April 27, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Mix it Up; or, How to Beat Vigilance Decrement

In the mid-1940s, the British psychologist Norman Mackworth set about to investigate why, during World War II, the Royal Air Force’s radar and sonar operators would miss weak signals that could suggest submerged enemy vessels.

Mackworth was particularly interested in why this observed phenomenon was likely to happen more towards the end of the operators’ shifts.

The “Mackworth Clock” study established that after 30 minutes in an intense task, there was a deterioration of 10–15% in the accuracy of signal detection. Fatigue ensued, and blood flow to the brain decreased. This deterioration continued as the time on task increased. Mackworth also found that short breaks restored performance.

The Way Attention Works

Research on “vigilance” (that’s psychology-speak for attention) has demonstrated that attention is a limited resource. Most of us find it challenging to sustain constant attention to a single task for long periods, especially if the task were demanding, tedious, and boring. Students, for example, can’t concentrate and follow lectures for more a few minutes at a time. This notion of limited and waning attention is called “vigilance decrement.”

Sustained Vigilance Requires Hard Mental Work

Vigilance decrement also increases error rates and slows down reaction times, especially in tasks that need sustained attention—security personnel, surveillance-camera monitors, pilots and vehicle drivers, medical diagnostic screeners, students, and so on—even engineers who train self-driving cars.

As with Mackworth’s study, vigilance decrement is most pronounced when monitoring screens and displays, often over periods as short as 10 or 15 minutes.

TSA screeners in America, for instance, continually rotate positions throughout their shift to avoid making mistakes and missing details—especially small but important details. They even rotate among different stations. Every TSA officer is trained in all the tasks on the floor, including x-ray screening, searching bags, validating tickets and passports, and conducting pat-down searches. TSA agents take frequent breaks, sometimes resting for 30 minutes every two or three hours.

Idea for Impact: To Beat Vigilance Decrement, Take Truly Restful Breaks

Rest well before undertaking a task that requires sustained attention. The airline industry has specific guidelines for duty, rest, and sleep requirements to combat the risks of fatigue in aircrews.
Hand over surveillance tasks as frequently as possible.
Mix ’em up. Try interleaving—instead of focusing on a single task, frequently switch between different ones.

During the current COVID-19 lockdown, you’ll work better with breaks. Mix up how you sequence your work. Avoid doing the same tasks in the same order each day.

Inspirational Quotations #838

April 26, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

If I like chocolate it won’t surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I’ve got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you’d think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money—money is all they think about—they’re all nuts.
—John Cleese (British Comic Actor, Writer)

The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit Scientist)

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.
—Jane Fonda (American Actress)

Love is the last relay and ultimate outposts of eternity.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British Poet, Artist)

But I like not these great successes of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Philosopher, Physicist)

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.
—Ben Hecht (American Screenwriter)

I shall devote only a few lines to the expression of my belief in the importance of science … it is by this daily striving after knowledge that man has raised himself to the unique position he occupies on earth, and that his power and well-being have continually increased.
—Marie Curie (Polish-born French Physicist)

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
—Harold Pinter (British Playwright)

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
—Leonard Cohen (Canadian Musician, Author)

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

How to Have a Eureka Moment during the Coronavirus Lockdown

April 23, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The best solutions to problems sometimes come about suddenly and unexpectedly when people aren’t actively working on their issues.

Psychologists call this phenomenon “incubation”—a brief shift away from a problem that could trigger a flash of insight as if from no additional effort. [Incidentally, “incubation” is very much a term in vogue during the current epidemic.]

Abundant anecdotes evoke creative breakthroughs made when inventors took breaks from working on their problems after many failed attempts to solve them.

‘Eureka Moments’ happen all the time

Perhaps the best-known case in point of incubation is that of the ancient Greek polymath Archimedes.

It’s plausible that Archimedes realized that he could investigate the suspected adulteration of Hieron II’s votive crown (“corona” in Italian/Latin, incidentally) by weighing it in water. The legend doesn’t appear in any of Archimedes’s known works.

That Archimedes leaped out from the bath in which he purportedly got the idea and ran home unclothed is likely a popular embellishment. The Roman architect Vitruvius first mentioned this spin to the story some 200 years after the supposed event:

[Archimedes] happened to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed that the more his body sank into it, the more water ran out over the tub. As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question, he jumped out of the tub and rushed home naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking; for he as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, “Heúrēka, heúrēka.” meaning “I have found (it,) I have found (it.)

Millennia later, the scientific world is replete with the exclamation. In fact, the prospectors of California’s gold rush were so keen on the expression that it has appeared on the state seal since 1849, becoming the state’s motto in 1963.

Idea for Impact: To overcome a mental block, take your mind off the problem

After a period of conscious work, if you’ve reached an impasse that is blocking (“fixation”) your awareness of the solution to a problem, set it aside.

Remove yourself from the task. Take your mind off the problem. Go for a run, play with your dog, play an instrument, indulge in your favorite video game, take a shower, or embark on some optimally distracting hobby.

Creativity involves putting old ideas together in new ways. Your mind may be shuffling information at all times, even when you’re not conscious of it. You may just hit upon a solution during either your time away or when you return to the problem after the incubation period.

Is Your Harried Mind Causing You to Underachieve?

April 20, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

American psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, author of Driven to Distraction (2011,) surveyed cognitive effects such as reduced attention instigated by the hyperkinetic environment that’s become an artifact of modern life.

A never-ending barrage of stimuli and sensations have instigated distractibility, mayhem, inner frenzy, and impatience. Consequently, people can’t stay organized, establish priorities, and manage time effectively—causing them to underachieve.

Hallowell described how “Attention Deficit Trait (ADT)” makes smart people underperform in this Harvard Business Review article.

ADT is brought on by the demands on our time and attention that have exploded over the past two decades. As our minds fill with noise, the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and thoroughly to anything.

The symptoms of ADT come upon a person gradually. The sufferer doesn’t experience a single crisis but rather a series of minor emergencies while he or she tries harder and harder to keep up. Shouldering a responsibility to “suck it up” and not complain as the workload increases, executives with ADT do whatever they can to handle a load they simply cannot manage as well as they’d like. The ADT sufferer therefore feels a constant low level of panic and guilt. Facing a tidal wave of tasks, the executive becomes increasingly hurried, curt, peremptory, and unfocused, while pretending that everything is fine.

At a time when the modern corporate culture over-rewards folks who can multitask, deal with ever more responsibilities, and respond now, Hallowell offers the following solutions:

Promote positive emotions. Create a work positive, fear-free emotional work environment in which the brain can function at its best.
Take physical care of your brain. Adequate sleep, a proper diet (increase complex carbohydrates and protein intake,) exercise, and meditation are vital for staving off ADT.
Get organized. Take note of the times of day when you tend to perform at your best; do your most important work then, and save the routine work for other times. Reserve a part of the day to think, plan, and do “deep work.”
Regulate your emotions. To thwart an imminent overreaction to stress (“amygdala hijack” per Daniel Goleman‘s Emotional Intelligence (1995,)) distract yourself by stopping and doing something else. A self-soothing action calms you down until you can focus again.

Idea for Impact: Stress is a terrible ailment in today’s workforce. Learn to manage yourself actively instead of continually reacting to problems as they happen. Avoid overburdening yourself and squandering your willpower. Regulate your work environment, tweak your work habits, get organized, and manage your emotional and physical health.

Inspirational Quotations #837

April 19, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.
—Neville Chamberlain (British Head of State)

There are so many girls, and so few princes.
—Liza Minnelli (American Singer, Actress)

Be humble, if thou would’st attain to Wisdom. Be humbler still, when Wisdom thou hast mastered.
—Helena Blavatsky (Ukrainian-born American Theosophist)

To question a wise man is the beginning of wisdom.
—German Proverb

Out of all virtues simplicity is my most favorite virtue. So much so that I tend to believe that simplicity can solve most of the problems, personal as well as the world problems. If the life approach is simple one need not lie so frequently, nor quarrel nor steal, nor envy, anger, abuse, kill. Everyone will have enough and plenty so need not hoard, speculate, gamble, hate. When character is beautiful, you are beautiful. That is the beauty of simplicity.
—Ela Bhatt (Indian Labor Activist)

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

Anybody who believes in something without reservation, believes that this thing is right and should be, has the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them.
—Golda Meir (Israeli Head of State)

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German Writer)

Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
—Elon Musk (American Entrepreneur)

Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn’t about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.
—John Kotter (American Management Consultant)

The happiest heart that ever beat
Was in some quiet breast
That found the common daylight sweet,
And left to Heaven the rest.
—John Vance Cheney (American Poet)

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.
—A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Indian Head of State, Scientist)

An Appointment with April

April 16, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes (2000,) a story about the Spanish-born philosopher and poet George Santayana:

When Santayana came into a sizable legacy, he was able to relinquish his post on the Harvard faculty. The classroom was packed for his final appearance, and Santayana did himself proud. He was about to conclude his remarks when he caught sight of a forsythia beginning to blossom in a patch of muddy snow outside the window. He stopped abruptly, picked up his hat, gloves, and walking stick, and made for the door. There he turned. “Gentlemen,” he said softly, “I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April.”

To complement, an extract from the Anglican clergyman and writer Charles Kingsley’s Letters and Memories of His Life (1877):

I am not fond, you know, of going into churches to pray. We must go up into the chase in the evenings, and pray there with nothing but God’s cloud temple between us and His heaven! And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all night long! And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all still—hushed—awe-bound, as the great thunderclouds slide up from the far south! Then, there to praise God!”

Idea for Impact: Rekindle a Love Affair with Nature

Depending on where in the world you are, the glory of Spring has arrived.

And it has transformed the world in an outburst of renewal and regeneration.

Nature flaunts her bounty, and there’s life everywhere.

A miracle is unfolding—leaves erupting, flowers blossoming, trees budding, birds making nests, bees buzzing. Indeed, “the Earth is like a child that knows poems,” as the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke rejoiced in ushering Spring.

Beckon your fullest blossom this season by soaking up the atmosphere of the season.

Nature offers not just escape but reassurance during the current COVID-19 epidemic.

Unplug from your contraptions and get plugged into Nature.

How Ritz-Carlton Goes the Extra Mile // Book Summary of ‘The New Gold Standard’

April 13, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Psychologist Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard (2008) describes how luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton has programmed its organization to foster customer-centric behavior in employees at all levels.

Ritz-Carlton’s clearly-defined and well-implemented cultural principles, called “Gold Standards,” enable the company’s employees to deliver the exceptional service that its refined customers have come to expect. Ritz-Carlton’s brand recognition is so deep-rooted that such phrases as “ritzy” and “putting on the ritz” have become part of the lexicon.

Values First

Ritz-Carlton propagates its customer-centricity goals by making a compact trifold “Credo Card” part of each employee’s uniform. These cards describe the “ultimate guest experience,” and they are shared with guests eagerly. Michelli writes, “Ultimately the value of the Credo or any other core cultural roadmap is the opportunity it affords those inside the business to realize how the ideal customer and staff experience looks and feels.”

Service Principle #10 of Gold Standards states, “When a guest has a problem or needs something special, you should break away from your regular duties to address and resolve the issue.” Irrespective of rank and title, every employee can spend as much as $2,000 per day per guest without a supervisor’s approval to solve a guest’s problem. This distinctive policy not only permits the employees to fulfill their guests’spoken and implied needs but also empowers employees to use their best judgment to create memorable and personal experiences for guests.

While some might think that this type of empowerment is both ill advised and financially irresponsible, leadership at Ritz-Carlton has determined the trust they place in employees is well founded. Rather than being extravagant with the resources entrusted to them, the employees tend to be very cautious … the advantage of the $2,000 staff empowerment is that the employees don’t have to delay a service response by taking it up to the next level in the organization, and they can take the initiative to enhance guest experiences.

Empowerment through Trust

Guided by co-founder Horst Schulze’s oft-cited business principle, “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,” Ritz-Carlton selects, trains, and cultivates a dedicated workforce of outstanding professionals who are just as deserving of respect as Ritz-Carlton’s upscale guests.

Ritz-Carlton’s customer-centric principles and culture inform its hiring and training processes and preside over the rewards and promotion systems. Managers use every opportunity to go over the company’s values and remind everybody to polish up on caring for guests. For example, at the start of each shift, everyone—from laundry staff to executives—participates in a 15-minute “lineup” to talk about the nitty-gritty of the Gold Standards.

Michelli observes, “When it comes to the Gold Standards, Ritz-Carlton leaders and frontline staff alike can appear, from an outsider’s perspective, to be teetering toward the fanatical.” No wonder, then, that Ritz-Carlton has become a paradigm for the highest level of sustainable customer experience. In the year 2000, the company launched the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center to offer courses and to consult for anyone interested in its cult of customer service. In 2001, when Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson were preparing to launch Apple Stores, they sent executives to Ritz-Carlton’s leadership program to learn about offering the best customer experience. Apple’s notion of anticipatory customer service and the concept of Genius Bars originated from Ritz-Carlton.

Delivering Wow!

During the “lineup” meetings, Ritz-Carlton managers and leaders also reinforce the customer-service principles by sharing “Wow!” stories of delighting guests. The internal communication department collects such stories each week and publishes them in the in-house newsletters. “Positive storytelling. The ability to capture, share, and inspire through tangible examples of what it means to live the Credo and core corporate values.”

The New Gold Standard includes many anecdotes from hotel guests, employees, managers, and executives to explain how Ritz-Carlton has “going above and beyond the call of duty” embodied in its culture.

A breakfast waiter scurried to a neighborhood grocery store to buy a guest’s preferred grape jelly when the dining room did not have it on hand.
At the Ritz-Carlton Dubai, a manager and a staff carpenter built a temporary access ramp made of wood boards to allow a guest and his wheelchair-bound wife to access the sandy beach, dine by the ocean, and watch the sun go down.
When a guest called the Ritz-Carlton Naples to notify that she had run out of gas, a doorman filled up a few five-gallon gasoline containers and drove 40 miles to help out the stranded woman and her children.
During Hurricane Katrina, employees of the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans pushed laundry carts loaded with luggage and guests through flooded streets to get them to safe locations.

Lest the reader dismisses these as cherry-picked examples of “overdoing it” in Michelli’s laudatory narrative, these cases in point are demonstrative of the Ritz-Carlton DNA. The employees feel thoroughly invested in and trusted by their employers. And Ritz-Carlton recognizes that customer loyalty is dependent upon the frontline employees who administer such sophisticated service daily.

Idea for Impact: Foster a foundation of customer-centricity

Speed-read Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard. It offers ample insights into establishing your own gold standards for achieving excellence in customer service.

Create a customer-centric culture that identifies, nurtures, and reinforces service-excellence as a primary guiding principle. “Leadership often involves fostering the environment in which everyday creativity emerges in response to the needs of specific customer groups.”
Foster a culture where employees take up personal accountability for resolving customers’ problems.
Train employees to anticipate and fulfill the unmet—even unstated—needs of customers.
Reiterate that providing a ‘wow!’ experience should be each employee’s goal during every interaction with a customer.

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Nagesh Belludi

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Mix it Up; or, How to Beat Vigilance Decrement

The Way Attention Works

Sustained Vigilance Requires Hard Mental Work

Idea for Impact: To Beat Vigilance Decrement, Take Truly Restful Breaks

Wondering what to read next?

‘Eureka Moments’ happen all the time

Idea for Impact: To overcome a mental block, take your mind off the problem

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Rekindle a Love Affair with Nature

Wondering what to read next?

Values First

Empowerment through Trust

Delivering Wow!

Idea for Impact: Foster a foundation of customer-centricity

Wondering what to read next?