Maximise Potential

We are at mid-point in 2018. Hope your year has been great thus far. Here are 5 business books I liked reading recently. Dream Teams by Shane Snow  – The premise of the book is simple. It is that the sum is greater than the individual parts. Also, it is not a team of super stars that win all the time. There are a lot of anecdotes here and one of them I liked was about the Wright brothers. They would like to discuss about one issue and then after some time they would take the opposite view and argue for that as well. The Daimler-Chrysler merger is also discussed here and why it didn’t work as expected. His other book “Smart Cuts” is also a delightful read. Build an A-team by Whitney Johnson  – Again another book on building winning teams. There is something called learning curve which she encourages everyone should undertake. Make sure you have everyone on your team on a steep learning curve. Once they achieve one accomplishment use the AID principle which is applaud the accomplis

Richard Branson is an icon of business. He is also a model of fun and success. His book Screw it, let’s do it was a fun read and here are the lessons I gleaned. Just do it –  This is just like the Nike slogan. Whatever you want in your life just do it. All the movers and shakers of this world have been men and women of action. They decided what they wanted and just went ahead with their plans. They were not worried about the opinion of others. Have fun – If you need to perform at your best week in and week out then you need to love your work. Keep on bringing the passion to your work. Keep loving what you do for your living. That is the number one route to happiness. Also have fun in your life whatever fun is for you. Maybe going on a hot air balloon is not fun for you but that’s fine as all of us are different and have different aspirations. Be bold –  This is the most important word we all need to pay attention to. The actions you take daily determine where you end up in life.

In my opinion we are already in the playoffs of life. Sometimes we wait for the right time to do something or think that there is some other time which is more important than now. However, the truth is we are all in the playoffs already and we don’t get too many other chances to showcase our talent. So, this is the main game. Here are the actions needed to win in the playoffs. Perform –  I love this word because all of us have need to perform with the talent we have. Some of us are even gifted but only if we do the work required to discover our talent. Performing every week over a long period of time is the key to our success. Love your work – If you need to perform at your best week in and week out then you need to love your work. Keep on bringing the passion to your work. Keep loving what you do for your living. That is the number one route to happiness. Action –  This is the most important word we all need to pay attention to. The actions you take daily determine where you en

In an era where there are so many leadership experts are providing their own jargons Peter Drucker stood as someone who went for the basics. Peter Drucker is to business what Vince Lombardi is to football. He has 3 principles of leadership which I liked. Leaders think through organization’s mission –  Nothing complicated but the number one responsibility of the leader is to set the organizational mission and then achieve it. The leaders set the goals, sets the priorities, and sets and maintains the standards. I think this is also the key to personal success. Knowing what you want and then going after it is what the journey of success and leadership is about. Leadership is a responsibility not a rank – Yes lot of experts talking about this now. That is, you can lead from where you are planted. Leaders must take responsibility for results. When things go wrong they take personal responsibility and when things go well they give credit to the team. Leaders earn trust –  This is very