Day #22 Grayleap Reading Challenge #FamilyBusiness #OneThing #Leadership #OKRs

1) YASH GUPTA review 4th Chapter of "The Good Indian Employee's Guide to Surviving a Lala Company" (Author Rajiv Gupta )

Chapter 4 - Meet Lala's family Accountant: The Muneem

"As Lalaji's TRUSTED accountants, muneems have a sense of undying guardianship towards his money."

The Muneem is not just an accountant but also a custodian of "Kacchi parchi" and other business practices that might help Lalaji to minimize tax expenses and prevent others from "stealing or wasting a penny of Lalaji's money."

However, this loyalty gives the Muneems such immense power that they often cause serious damage to the company by interfering in areas where they have no expertise.

For example, in the case of "the marketing head who travelled too much and the Muneem who travelled too little," the Muneem exaggerates the travel expenses to put the marketing team on trial with half-cooked information. This led to a drop in sales-related travel, which saved some money, but overall it was a loss to the company as monthly sales saw a big dip.

Everyone can learn something from this. The Muneem holds a powerful position in Lalaji's ecosystem and should not be underestimated by Lalaji for his power to cause damage to the company. For employees, it might be safer to avoid undermining Muneem's authority. The Muneem needs to realize that his myopic views are not consistent with his claims to be loyal and keep the company's best interests in mind.

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2) Daizy Patel reviews the 8th chapter of "The One Thing" (Author Gary Keller with Jay Papasan)

Chapter 8 - A Balanced Life

The next lie, which the author talks about, is a balanced life. He says that we have been so fascinated by the idea of work-life balance that we almost spend our life believing that the balance between work and family can solely make us happy.

Historically, balancing our lives was a privilege because, way back then, people used to spend their lives either hunting or working on fields because if they didn't do these things, they may have died of hunger. The author shares how the term "work-life balance" developed by the mid-1980s, when more than half of all married women joined the work force. Referring to Ralph E.?Gomory’s preface in the 2005 book "Being Together Working Apart: Dual-Career Families And The Work Life Balance," the author says:

"We went from a family unit with a breadwinner and a homemaker to the culture of two breadwinners and no homemaker."

Work-life balance is a big myth because balance means being in the middle, and everyone knows that nothing magical can happen in the middle. Magic happens only at the extremes, and when we reach for the extremes, that means the other extreme is being affected.

According to the author, being at the extreme is unimportant; what matters is how long you stay at the extreme. He also says that sometimes when we work for long hours, we feel that we have no life, and it's equally true when we spend too much time on our personal life and still have "to- dos", we feel that we have no life. So all we need is to accept that being at extremes at the right time to attain the right result is not bad.

Another very important truth that has been discussed is that "life waits for no one." The author, through various examples, convinces us that many times we spend our lives doing things in the hope that one day we will be able to spend more time with our families or do things that we are unable to do now, but we forget that life does not wait for anyone. He warns:

"When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can't cover. Even if you are sure you can win, be careful that you can live with what you lose."

Author suggests us to replace the word "balance" with "counterbalance".?No matter what you do, there will always be something that will be undone at the end of a day, month, year, or even life. But make sure you can't leave everything undone, and that's where you will need counterbalancing:

"Counterbalancing is not only about your sense of wellbeing, it's essential to your well-being."

The author also helps us by saying that even if you want to achieve an extraordinary result, you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands.?He further states that going out of balance is not really the question. The main question is how short or how long you go out of balance. In the case of your personal life, you should avoid longer periods, and as far as your professional life is concerned, you can take your time taking decisions, making peace with the idea, so that you may attain extraordinary results.

Another very vital example which the author has used on page number 82, is of a juggler, where he very cleverly asks his reader to imagine that in the game of life, the 5 balls you jungle around are work, family, health, friends, and integrity. Further, he explains that the work is a rubber ball, and even if it drops, it will bounce back, but the other 4 are glass balls, and hence, once dropped, they can never be put together in the same way. Hence, the author leaves us with a thought to make our choices carefully and lead a successful life accordingly.

TAKE AWAYS FROM THIS CHAPTER

"When you act on your priority, you will automatically go out of balance. Giving more time to one thing over another."

Having a balanced life is a big myth. Life waits for no one. Don’t be away from your family for long.

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3) Rajesh Madan reviews the 23nd chapter of "Leaders Eat Last" (Author Simon Sinek)

Chapter 23: At Any Expense

When checks and balances give way to growth at any cost, it does not end well. Sinek gives the example of what happened to the airwaves and later to the television medium in the US to drive home this point.

News anchors of the 1960s and 70s (like Walter Cronkite) thought of themselves as having a mission. "We were sort of driven during the 1960s by this quasi-religious drive to give people the information they needed to have," says Ted Koppel, the award-winning newsman and former host of Nightline.

The news channel fulfilled an obligation to the public. It was "the loss leader that permitted NBC, CBS and ABC to justify the enormous profits made by their entertainment divisions," Koppel explains. "It never occurred to the network brass that news programming could be profitable."

But on November 4, 1979, a group of Islamist students and militants stormed the American Embassy in Tehran and took captive 52 Americans. ABC News debuted America Held Hostage: The Iran Crisis, a daily series developed to cover developments in the hostage crisis. This series, which was later renamed Nightline, opened the industry's eyes to the fact that news can also be profitable.

It was the 1980s, and backed by its wealth, America's craving for dopamine was on the rise. It was the Reagan administration that changed its view of television news as just another business trying to make a buck. Before long, all regulations and checks were history. The drive to be the first or to boost ratings is put ahead of the drive to serve the public interest.

The news organisations went from delivering the news that you need, even if you don't want it, to delivering the news that you want, even if you don't need it. Instead of making the news interesting, they started making interesting news.

Haven't we seen something similar happening in India?

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4) Amarendra S. reviews the 12th Chapter of "Measure What Matters" (Author John Doerr)

Chapter 12 - Superpower #4: Stretch for Amazing

This chapter is for you if the following questions inspire you:

(1) How can you (and your team) create maximum value?

(2) What would amazing look like?

(3) What radical, high-risk action needs to be considered?

(4) What are you supposed to STOP doing?

(5) Where can you move resources or find new partners?

The author shares his experience at Intel:

"Intel treasured calculated risk-takers. It was a place I learned to stretch and to dare to fail."

Google is another company that is "synonymous with exponentially aggressive goals."

The Wired is quoted to have said about Google's 10X culture:

"A thousand percent improvement requires rethinking problems, exploring what is technically possible, and having fun in the process."

The average market approach is "10% improvement." The reality is that "10x thinking is rare". Hence, if you can play the game of 10x, then you will not have any competition.

Ready to explode exponentially?

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