Motivation

Executive Compensation: Pay Them Well, But Not Too Well

January 23, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Our executive compensation system is broken. Surveys show that the average public company CEO compensation is many hundred times that of the average employee. This gaping disparity in pay vis-à-vis the relative value they bring to their organizations is a moral embarrassment to our society, a point that wasn’t lost on the Occupy movement of yesteryear.

The debate over executive pay won’t die away anytime soon. As election year approaches, grandstanding politicians are vying to outdo each other with pledges to implement pubic policies that limit executive compensation, whereas theorists argue that, in a market economy, compensations should be set by supply and demand for executive talent.

The latter position is commonly echoed by company boards and executive compensation consultants—both of whom owe their cushy jobs to the CEOs and their top teams. They assert that leaders need to be provided with personal incentives to attract and motivate them.

Strangely enough, such incentives often demotivate the leaders’ followers. Financial incentives that are directed disproportionately to the leader in isolation often prove downright counterproductive.

Leadership is an outcome of the relationship between leader and follower, and excessively compensated leaders do not engender followership effectively.

This comports with financier J. P. Morgan‘s observations at the start of the twentieth century that the only characteristic common to his failing clients was a tendency to overpay those at the top. As Peter Drucker commented in The Frontiers of Management (1986,)

[J. P. Morgan found] eighty years ago that the only thing the businesses that were clients of J. P. Morgan & Co. and did poorly had in common was that each company’s top executive was paid more than 130 percent of the compensation of the people in the next echelon and these, in turn, more than 130 percent of the compensation of the people in the echelon just below them, and so on down the line. Very high salaries at the top, concluded Morgan—who was hardly contemptuous of big money or an “anticapitalist”—disrupt the team. They make even high-ranking people in the company see their own top management as adversaries rather than as colleagues…. And that quenches any willingness to say “we” and to exert oneself except in one’s own immediate self-interest.

Idea for Impact: Employees’ efforts are devalued markedly under conditions of gross inequality. Pay leaders well (if you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys,) but not too well.

How to Develop a Vision for Year 2020?

January 2, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Four Rules for Priority-Setting

As you think about what you want to achieve in the New Year, consider these four rules for priority setting laid down by the original management guru Peter Drucker in his seminal The Effective Executive (1966; my summary):

Courage rather than analysis dictates the truly important rules for identifying priorities:

Pick the future as against the past;

Focus on opportunity rather than on problems;

Choose your own direction—rather than climb on the bandwagon; and

Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is “safe” and easy to do.

How to Develop a Vision for 2020?

The first thing to do before thinking too far ahead in the future is to identify what success really means to you. Ask yourself, “It’s 31-Dec-2020 and the year 2020 is almost over. I am getting ready to celebrate the turn of the year with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?”

Visualize a year 2020 wherein everything has turned out the way you’ve wanted. You have given it your best, worked your hardest, and achieved all your goals. Now write down what you imagine.

Take the time to think through and develop a clear picture of where you want yourself and your work- and personal lives to be in three months, six months, and one year.

This exercise is generally effective at helping folks differentiate between tasks that simply feel urgent or top-of-mind from those that are truly important.

Idea for Impact: Getting clear on your vision will help you create a path that feels the most meaningful, stimulating, and fulfilling to you.

How to Turn Your Procrastination Time into Productive Time

August 1, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance,” assert Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr in The Power of Full Engagement. They advocate practicing energy management in addition to time management and prescribe “pulsing,” or interspersing periods of intense work with breaks to renew your energy levels.

This idea of energy management comports with the much-debated “muscle metaphor” of willpower. Mental stamina and personal energy are reservoirs. They get depleted as you go about your day, and need to be filled up every so often.

Idea for Impact: Match your tasks to your energy levels throughout the day

If you know yourself sufficiently well, you can make deliberate, proactive choices that can help you sustain your drive and feel more energetic all through the day.

First, identify the kinds of tasks that deplete or sustain your energy.

Once you discover your working pattern, match your tasks to your energy levels throughout the day. If you are at your best first thing in the morning, work on something complex and challenging as soon as you get to the office.

Relegate routine task tasks and administrative chores—processing emails, scheduling appointments, filing reports—for the afternoon.

Create a “Procrastination To-Do List”

Consider preparing a special “to-do” list with low-energy, low-brainpower, low-priority, but got-to-do tasks for when you don’t feel like doing anything else. (See this list of 10 smart things you can do in 10 minutes.)

In other words, whenever your brain needs time to rest, you can idle productively by getting something else done. You can tackle this list whenever you find yourself with time on hand, but without the energy, focus, or excitement that you need to deal with something important. Some folks call this the “procrastination to-do list.”

Be warned, though, that doing mindless-but-productive tasks during procrastinating is the thin end of the wedge—it can simply feed your propensity to procrastinate. Under the illusion of not procrastinating and “getting something done,” you will want to do all the less-important things that you can do instead of building momentum and switching to the few high-priority things that you must do.

Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus

July 29, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Here’s a précis of psychologist Ron Friedman’s HBR article on how to spend the first ten minutes of your day:

Ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?

This exercise is usually effective at helping people distinguish between tasks that simply feel urgent from those that are truly important. Use it to determine the activities you want to focus your energy on.

Then—and this is important—create a plan of attack by breaking down complex tasks into specific actions. Studies show that when it comes to goals, the more specific you are about what you’re trying to achieve, the better your chances of success.

Idea for Impact: Organize Yourself Good Concentration

Starting your day by mulling over proactively on “what should I have achieved” is a wonderful aid in keeping the mind headed in the right direction.

Planning is easier when your energy levels are highest, which, for most people, is first thing in the morning.

Knowing what your goals are before you launch your day can help you focus the mind and hold it steadily to one thing at a time and in the right order.

Change Isn’t Just Possible—It’s the Way Life Works

June 13, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Remarkable lines from “Change” from the English metaphysical poet John Donne’s Elegy III (Poems of John Donne, Volume 1, 1896):

To live in one land is captivity,
To run all countries, a wild roguery;
Waters stink soon, if in one place they bide,
And in the vast sea are more putrified:
But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this,
Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,
Then are they purest; Change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life and eternity.

Change helps you come back to yourself, over and over again, and ride the waves of richness through whatever life has to offer.

Change is a gift! Flow with it and seek out the beauty in each moment. Show up and be present, for there is something precious for you now—even within the pangs of loss and melancholy.

When Stress is Good

November 5, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stress and Anxiety Can Lead to Improved Performance

Why Some Stress Is Good for You Many people claim that they work best under pressure. There’s some truth to that. Stress is a natural response in highly competitive environments. Before an exam, important meeting, or contest, your heart rate rises and so does your blood pressure. You become more absorbed, alert, and efficient.

However, this favorable relationship applies only up to a certain level of stress. Past this level, stress impairs your performance—and eventually your heart.

In 1908, Harvard psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson first described the beneficial and harmful effects of stress (“psychological arousal”) on performance in a graph the shape of an upside-down U. According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, the ascendant curve reflects the energizing effect of arousal. The descendant curve reflects the negative effects of stress on thinking and learning, or performance in general.

Too Much Anxiety and Stress Impairs Performance, but so Does Too Little: The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Many physiological studies have demonstrated that stress enhances your performance by causing your brain to use more of its capabilities, improve memory and intelligence, and increase productivity. Without stress, athletes, performers, executives, and students are likely to underachieve.

There is an optimum level of arousal for every kind of task. So how do you find the right balance? How do you get yourself into the performance zone where stress is most helpful? How much stress is good? The answers depend on individual disposition, the types of stressors, the nature of the task itself, and perceptions of what is stressful to you.

When Stress is Good: The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Idea for Impact: Stress at Work May Be Inevitable but it Doesn’t Have to Be Detrimental

Stress can be a motivator. But don’t seek out stress—less of it is better. Make the stress you do have work for you. Becoming conscious of stress as a potential positive can reduce the harm it causes.

Develop an awareness of when you hit the limits beyond which working longer or harder is counter-productive (sportsmen tend to choke under intense pressure.) When you feel overwhelmed, look for ways to reduce or eliminate the stressors so you can become more productive again. Ask for help.
Performance deteriorates when your stress level is either too high or too low for a given task. Seek the optimal level of anxiety that can impel you forward without causing you to fight back or give up.

Idea for Impact: The Right Level of Anxiety Can Be a Positive Force for Driving Employees Forward

Anxiety and optimal performance is an individual affair. The Yerkes-Dodson Curve shifts as the performers become established and experienced with the undertaking.

Astute managers repeatedly assess and re-assess where their team members land on the Yerkes-Dodson Curve. Managers can identify over-stressed or under-motivated circumstances with employees and intervene quickly to tailor the level of stress.

I’ll Be Happy When …

October 19, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It is fallacious to let life slip away in the pursuit of the illusion that, “When I achieve something, I will be free to live in happiness.”

If you pursue a job, a relationship, a house, a material possession, or the settlement of a debt, happiness will never come because there is always another “something” that will follow the present one. The circumstances that you thus wait for do provide a transitory elation, but, too soon, they withdraw into the dull and mundane, only to be replaced by the next fantasy of happiness.

The Art of Simple Existence is One of the Most Difficult to Master

According to Buddhism, the art of simple existence is one of the most difficult to master. If you aren’t living in peace and happiness at this moment, you’ll never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only the aspiration of peace “someday when I accomplish something.”

The experience of pleasure, freedom, and love are available now, whatever your circumstance. The American clinical psychologist John Welwood reminds us of this in Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path:

Our society would have us believe that inner satisfaction depends on outer success and achievement. Yet struggling to “get somewhere” keeps us perpetually busy, stressed out, and disconnected from that essential inner resource—our ability to be fully present—which could provide a real sense of joy and fulfillment. Our life is unsatisfactory only because we are not living it fully, but instead we are pursuing a happiness that is always somewhere else, other than where we are right now…

Cultivating the capacity to be fully present—awake, attentive, and responsive—in all the different circumstances of life is the essence of spiritual practice and realization. Those with the greatest spiritual realization are those who are “all here,” who relate to life with an expansive awareness that is not limited by any fixation on themselves or their own point of view. They don’t shrink from any aspect of themselves or life as a whole.

Idea for Impact: When One Lives, One Must Live Entirely

However difficult your circumstances, however uncertain the times, peace is not to be earmarked for a future time. The definitive source of happiness lies in the quality of your thoughts. Real sustainable peace springs from a healthy and nurturing relationship with yourself. Let nothing and nobody take that away from you. Don’t postpone being at peace.

Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals

April 12, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Duplicity must be decried when used to justify the attainment and exercise of power. However, sometimes, even principled leaders must put on an act to realize noble ends—infuse optimism to surmount hopelessness, win followers’ devotion to audacious new ideas, for example.

In the Zen parable that follows, a warrior motivates his followers in the face of desperate odds. He persuades his outnumbered army by flipping an unfair coin and proclaiming that they are fated to win the battle.

A great Japanese warrior named Nobunaga decided to attack the enemy although he had only one-tenth the number of men the opposition commanded. He knew that he would win, but his soldiers were in doubt.

On the way he stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his men: “After I visit the shrine I will toss a coin. If heads comes, we will win; if tails, we will lose. Destiny holds us in her hand.”

Nobunaga entered the shrine and offered a silent prayer. He came forth and tossed a coin. Heads appeared. His soldiers were so eager to fight that they won their battle easily.

“No one can change the hand of destiny,” his attendant told him after the battle.

“Indeed not,” said Nobunaga, showing a coin which had been doubled, with heads facing either way.

Idea for Impact: Moral Leadership Relates to the Integrity of Leaders and Their Intentions

A wise leader must be open to bringing deception into play to smooth the way to sound decisions and noble results.

As long as leaders use these methods to respectable purposes, and until people wise up to their methods, certain ends can justify certain means.

Postscript: The quoted Zen parable is sourced from the celebrated compilation Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, Shambhala Edition (1961) by Paul Reps. This book traces its roots to the thirteenth-century Japanese anthology of Buddhist parables Shasekishū (Sand and Pebbles) compiled by the Kamakura-era monk Mujū.

What Your Messy Desk Says About You

March 13, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Appearances are Important

Your office and desk must seem organized. A messy office or a cluttered desk can not only impede your space and cramp your style, but also affect how your peers and superiors perceive you.

Clutter can drag you down, sap your energy, and reduce your efficiency. However, if clutter is your style, you should have every right to work the way you like to work.

A messy desk isn’t a professional flaw, but clutter may reflect of your competence. Untidiness can give an impression that your job may be too much for you to handle, or that you can’t get your thoughts and information organized.

How to Conquer Your Paperwork Crisis

As opposed to sorting through everything in your drawers, desktop, and filing systems, consider removing the whole lot somewhere else and only allowing the important things back.

Stephanie Winston, author of The Organized Executive, famously wrote that each clutter represents a decision not made. In this bestselling book, she recommends the “TRAF” system, a precursor to the “Inbox Zero” discipline that I’ve previously discussed on this blog. TRAF is an acronym for the four decisions you must make on each piece of paper that arrives at your desk. You can Toss it away, Refer or delegate it to someone else, Act on it, or File it if it absolutely deserves to be achieved. Don’t keep anything merely for reasons of habit or for sentimental reasons.
Don’t start tomorrow with today’s mess. Spending ten minutes at the end of your workday gearing your desk up for the next day can help you stay organized.

After you’ve taken steps to reorganize your office, sustain your system. Look for ways to further streamline and fine-tune your organization framework.

Idea for Impact: Don’t Let Clutter Spin Out of Control and Affect Other’s Perceptions

Taking too much time to organize can be just as ineffective—don’t end up spending so much time organizing that you don’t have the time to do anything else. (This is one of the shortcomings of David Allen’s Getting This Done system.) Learn to put things away as soon as you’re done working on them.

Being organized not only means less time wasted looking for things, but also rewards you with a greater sense of control and a favorable professional image.

Power Corrupts, and Power Attracts the Corruptible

January 12, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Picture of Statue of Demon Mahishasura atop Chamundi Hills in Mysore, India The recent sexual misconduct allegations of influential men abusing their towering positions for contemptuous behaviors provide yet another reminder that power corrupts. As the British politician and historian Lord John Dalberg-Acton famously wrote in an 1887 letter to the Anglican Bishop Mandell Creighton,

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which … the end learns to justify the means.

The recent scandals lay bare the three distinctive characteristics of the intoxication of power: the inflation of the self, the devaluation of the helpless, and a dreadful shortfall in self-awareness of actions and consequences.

In the case of studio executive Harvey Weinstein, the worse outrage is that, many prominent people, despite their awareness of Weinstein’s uninhibited abuse, stayed silent—and possibly benefited. Some Hollywood celebrities are said to have overlooked his transgressions. Meryl Streep, one of Hollywood’s most successful actors, who once referred to Weinstein as ‘God,’ had to contend the blame that everyone in Hollywood knew of Weinstein’s conduct. His staff sheltered him or paid off victims, many of whom chose to remain silent for fear of derailing their budding careers. Going public would have hurt them more than it would have damaged Weinstein, until those accusations reach a critical mass and suddenly everyone flipped against him.

The Intoxication of Power

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell first wrote about the “intoxication of power” in A History of Western Philosophy (1945,) and best described what develops in the minds of many people who, in all walks of life, exercise a measure of power and dominance.

The Greeks, with their dread of hubris and their belief in a Necessity or Fate superior even to Zeus, carefully avoided what would have seemed to them insolence towards the universe. The Middle Ages carried submission much further: humility towards God was a Christian’s first duty. Initiative was cramped by this attitude, and great originality was scarcely possible. The Renaissance restored human pride, but carried it to the point where it led to anarchy and disaster. … Man, formerly too humble, begins to think of himself as almost a God.

…

In all of this I feel a great danger, the danger of what might be called cosmic impiety. The concept of ‘truth’ as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness—the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte. I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.

Idea for Impact: People with even the smallest amount of authority can and will find ways to abuse it

People can become corrupt with power, fame, wealth, and influence, and, as I’ve written previously, they regularly get away with it. The solution, I believe, is to subject our elites (and the sycophantic supporters who are disposed to collude in self-interest) to as many restrictions, supervisions, and checks and balances as possible, and scrutinize them closely so as to spot hubristic traits and symptoms of the abuse of power.

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Motivation

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Four Rules for Priority-Setting

How to Develop a Vision for 2020?

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Idea for Impact: Match your tasks to your energy levels throughout the day

Create a “Procrastination To-Do List”

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Idea for Impact: Organize Yourself Good Concentration

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Stress and Anxiety Can Lead to Improved Performance

Too Much Anxiety and Stress Impairs Performance, but so Does Too Little: The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Idea for Impact: Stress at Work May Be Inevitable but it Doesn’t Have to Be Detrimental

Idea for Impact: The Right Level of Anxiety Can Be a Positive Force for Driving Employees Forward

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The Art of Simple Existence is One of the Most Difficult to Master

Idea for Impact: When One Lives, One Must Live Entirely

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Idea for Impact: Moral Leadership Relates to the Integrity of Leaders and Their Intentions

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Appearances are Important

How to Conquer Your Paperwork Crisis

Idea for Impact: Don’t Let Clutter Spin Out of Control and Affect Other’s Perceptions

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The Intoxication of Power

Idea for Impact: People with even the smallest amount of authority can and will find ways to abuse it

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