Capability Building - Key to Unlocking Excellence

Amidst turmoil in life, dealing with extremely high levels of uncertainties, what is the only tool you have with you??Your Own Capability!?It could be the capability to bounce back, the capability to recognize new avenues, the capability to master your emotions, the capability to settle for less than what you are used to, the capability to change your perspective, the capability to find joy even when things look to be against you, the capability to give your best even when the returns do not match, the capability to give people around more chances, the capability to pull yourself out of the ruts when no helping hand seems to be around, the capability to be focused on your larger goals while facing the everyday struggles, the capability to grab an opportunity when it appears.?It could be any capability under the sun.

Do you automatically develop the capability required to deal with your circumstances??

A question may arise here; how would I even know if I would need to develop such and such capability within myself when I do not know how and when things would drift against me? ‘Preparing’ for a situation as you fear that things might go against you, need not be capability development. Here you assume a circumstance and prepare to deal with it. Preparation is purely external (situation-based.)

Whereas Capability development is being the best you can be, to live the best life you can live, it is purely an internal act to bring forth the potential, hidden or not. It is not dependent on circumstances, in fact, it is the act of choosing the extent of what you can do with a particular circumstance.?Capability Development is your key to unlocking excellence. Excellence in your personal image you have about yourself, excellence in your professional delivery, excellence in working with others, excellence in building teams and organizations, excellence in relationships, excellence in other pursuits in life whether spiritual or secular.?

Don’t take anyone’s word for it, see it for yourself. When you become the best you can be or even strive to be your personal best, you have a sense of contentment in everything around you, chasing after an ‘idea' of success you have adopted over time becomes less attractive, you become more internally driven, you start thinking for your own self, things out of your control disappoint you lesser with time, your days get more meaningful as you retire in the evening with the feeling that you have given you best you could!

Capability building and the pursuit of excellence is not a distant view idea, it is as close to you as a night of sound sleep.?How??Your perception holds the key. It is how you perceive 'being your best’, in relation to the ‘idea of best’ to which you have been conditioned over time. It is how you perceive excellence achieved only when it is rewarded. It is how you perceive that capability building is only useful when you have monetary reward associations with it and not as a personal pursuit of living your best life possible whoever you are and wherever you are.?

The goal of this piece of writing is to get you thinking about capability building and bringing excellence into your lives, in your homes, in your workplace, in your teams, in your company, and in your country!?

Where to begin? Begin with nurturing a mindset of excellence.?

Now, let us come to the Brass Tacks!?

As per my understanding & experience to date, speaking from a broader point of view following is the three-step method for excellence:

A?Mindset?of Delayed Gratification?

Capability Building?Action

Manifestation?of Excellence?

“Thought – Action – Manifestation”

A Mindset of Delayed Gratification in simple terms is developing the virtue of patience. Postponing what you like in place of what is good for you.??

Capability Building as described in detail earlier is striving to be your best.?How does Capability Building lead to the manifestation of Excellence??As you continue to build on your capability, what comes to the fore is your own potential which wasn’t revealed to you or wasn’t very evident to you earlier.?Capability fuels your capacity to perform. Being caught up in the daily grind, you tend to forget that you are capable of being much more than you consider yourself to be. Hence, the more your very own potential you discover, the more you will apply it in your life. Can Excellence escape you when you build more, discover more, and apply more, than you have been till now? And continue to do it as a way of your life??

It is extremely important that I remind you how I perceive excellence (the newsletter on excellence has been published earlier; please refer to this link to view it again:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/unpacking-excellence-perspective-neha-phull)?

Also, breaking down what I mean by ‘best’

From very early in life we have known the usage of the word ‘best’ in relative terms. It is used for things & people externally, it is used only in comparison and there is just one definition of ‘the best.’ Hence, in any mention of the word ‘best,’ our minds automatically start?comparing?it with everything?outside?of us and against a very specific standard. The context in which I am using this word is completely internal, is non-comparison to anything outside and most importantly the internal best is not stagnant, it changes and has no definition. What is the purpose of constant change in the definition of best? If I have an ideal of how 'best' would look like, I limit myself to that ideal. I cannot talk about the unlimited potential on one hand and a limited ideal on the other. Hence, I do not tie myself to an idea of the best and limit myself to becoming my own personal best, whatever it may be. The catch here is I can manipulate myself into believing my limited potential. If you do that, reflect and see, you are not really pursuing excellence then, it is not capability building that is your focus.?Also, it is about developing your best along with developed capabilities and potential. It can take the form of an inspiration/role model to begin with. The idea of not tying yourself with a limited best is to not get demotivated in the journey of building your capacity, as our natural tendency is to quickly get discouraged if we do not meet an ideal soon. Persevere regardless!

The barrier to capability building:

The biggest barrier to capability building is the urgency of behaviour change (circumstance/reality.) We recognize the need to change only when the behaviour (the circumstance) is not in accordance with what we want. All our energy and focus is to somehow make the situation right. And, this goes on as a perpetual loop. If anything undesirable happens, we apply all our energy to fix the situation and forget what caused it. Almost every time we find ourselves looking for fixes.?

This never-ending ‘fixing’ mentality needs to be refocused on building capability. While taking care of the urgent need at hand, we need to see beyond the behaviour and build capability, especially during an undesired reality. The undesired reality is a knock on the door of the need to build the capability.?

How to recognize whether you are?Changing Behaviour?or?Building Capability?

Capability Building?is fulfilment-driven, and?Behaviour Change?is fear driven.

Behaviour Change?is generally a curative approach,?Capability Building?is not just a preventive approach.

Capability Building?results in Behaviour change subtly, organically, in small increments. This change is Enduring. The curative focus on?Behaviour change?is Fleeting.?

Capability Building?is the Cause,?Behaviour Change?is the Effect. Logically speaking the cause produces the desired effect. Working on the effect will not change the cause!?

The need to?build capability?could be triggered by undesired?behaviour?but is not limited to it.?

I keep?changing behaviour?(making it work) until it gets out of control. The thing with the root problem is, you just can’t ‘not’ address it. It has a bad habit of surfacing when nothing is left on the surface to be taken care of.?Capability Building?does not just address that one underlying problem, it builds strength for everything that comes in contact with it.?

Why do we even go for a change in behaviour as the first approach and not Capability Building?

-???????Lack of internal awareness towards the pattern of behaviour?

-???????Habitually inclined towards quick fixes

-???????Lack of knowledge or guidance to build capability

-???????Lack of self-belief in the potential you might have?

-???????Lack of exposure to appropriate role models?

-???????Holding beliefs that discomfort is a ‘bad thing’ (non-acceptance towards delayed gratification)

-???????Living with assumptions

-???????Incapability to acknowledge and celebrate small wins

-???????Undermining your own growth if it seems ‘insignificant’ or does not fall under your conditioned idea of growth

-???????Impatience?

-???????Not asking for help

Now pick up any aspect of your life; professional, personal finances, relationship with yourself and with others, family, physical or mental health, and even spirituality. Out of the above-mentioned reasons, consciously or as a habit, where have you worked on just changing behaviours and where have you built capability? Can you see the difference in your very own life between the aspects where you have applied both these principles? Which areas of life does most contentment lie in? Can you now spot what is it that you value most in life and put in your all to make it work?

Your answers will give you clarity on what lasts, what is worthwhile and what works only temporarily.?

It is important to discuss capability building from an organization/team perspective.?At the org level, the Capability Building approach as a Culture itself differentiates a company from its peers in the Pursuit of Excellence. Below are highlighted some easy-to-relate, day-to-day things which a team experiences. I have attempted to provide a capability-building approach in contrast to the behaviour-changing conventional approach. One can reflect on these and put it to experience keeping ‘delayed gratification’ in mind to see if it makes a difference from an excellence standpoint. In most cases, the responsibility lies on the Leader of the team to be the culture carrier.?

-???????Change or introduction of a policy in case a new message must be passed in the team

-???????Mandatory and conventional training methods,?

-???????Hiring for new skills as soon as new requirements from a client comes in

-???????Always seeking new hires for leadership positions

-???????Propagating culture merely as a townhall agenda or graphics on the wall

-???????Numbers first, people second approach, especially where cost-cutting is concerned laying people is the first on the agenda

Elaborated here a few:

Situation: The tempo of the team is down.?

o???The conventional/behaviour change approach:?Let us have a fun Friday including team lunch.

o???Instead;?have a sit-down with your team, and open doors to candid conversation. Listen to their woes, and provide your transparent perspective as well, as far as possible. Not once, do it as a practice. It won’t be well received initially. The loud voices will get louder, the quiet voices will get quieter and yet, persist! You would be surprised by the kind of solutions you and your team could come up with. Also, build your own capability to be able to hear unpleasant things.??

Situation: A function-capable employee is acting out, and performance is getting affected. You have highlighted the misses, yet the problem persists.?

o???The conventional/behaviour change approach:?official warning or placing them on a PIP.

o???Instead;?Get to know the reason, either directly or indirectly. It could be the joining of a new member or manager in the team, it could be health-related, inclusion-related, or simply upskilling or resource related. Provide the support you can in your capacity, and take the commitment from the employee to work with you. It seems like a long-stretched process as you may not be used to it. Well, this is the road to excellence.

Situation: Addressing the problem of Collaboration in your team.?

o???The conventional/behaviour change approach:?Setting up additional intrateam meetings, introducing policies attempting to advance collaboration, and Adhoc townhall to introduce a sense of ‘family’

o???Instead;?Make an effort to understand the ground-level issues in collaboration within the team, provide workable solutions, work with the team to role model and show the path towards the sense of collaboration in them, reward collaborative behaviours exhibited, introduce a sense of community where everyone knows how they will be benefitted through collaboration and not through a forced sense of family.?

Situation: Sales team underperforming

o???The conventional/behaviour change approach: Introduce mostly incentives-based remuneration, hire new salespeople,?

o???Instead; become the salesperson with them, adopt new approaches to sales, radical sales training methods along with incentive remuneration

Situation: The industry going towards digital

o???The conventional/behaviour change approach: Quickly adopt new tech and expect the team to measure up, skill up,?

o???Instead; ask the team to research the new tech and come up with use cases within the org, show them the benefits of digitalisation on their individual delivery, provide one-one training?

Situation: Misplacement of strategy

o???The conventional/behaviour change approach: Having more strategy meetings, going in circles emphasising the same strategies, blame-games

o???Instead; accept the fallout of the initial strategy, see where the chain of implementation got entangled, and solve together for the team, taking more opinions in introducing & applying a new strategy

Learn to live with the discomfort for a bit longer, build the capability during this period, and enjoy the fruits of continued excellence.

Concluding with a few lines from Swami Vivekananda?“In a day, when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are travelling on the wrong path.”