Grow: Develop Yourself for Success

By Anurag Harsh

In this book, Grow - Develop Yourself for Success, I explore the often maligned approach to self help and career development that rests on the belief that our flaws and our imperfections can unlock our success. I won’t couch my language with feel-good terms. I won’t placate you. My goal here is to arm you with practical and potent tools for self-exploration so that you can achieve your goals and be better than you are now. Your new and improved story starts now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483599670

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Anurag Harsh

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Osborne Manhattan Publishing Group

300 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10022

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and company names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Grow - Develop Yourself for Success. -- 1st ed.

ISBN: 978-1-48359-967-0

For Agustya & Vigyan

Have big dreams, you’ll grow into them

For Dad, late B.K Sinha

If I can only be half the man you were when I grow up

TABLE OF CONTENTS

How to be Truly Innovative & Creative at Work and in Life

How to Be More Productive Than Everyone Else

Finding Your Inner Balance in Life

The Art of Winning People with Words

How to Focus Under Pressure

Talking Your Way to Success

Developing the Mental Resolve for Success

Understanding Human Behavior for Success

Will You Keep Coming Back?

Understanding the Dynamics of Groups at Work

How to Deal with Conflict at Work

Self-Interest Is Tied to Shared Success

Life Lessons from the Rio Olympics

The ROI of Caring for Others

Key to Great Business Relationships is to Understand a Person’s Past

Does Authenticity on Social Media Matter?

Does Anger Have a Role in the Workplace?

Six Simple Ways to Create Balance

Why Do We Work Best When We Have No Time?

Are Vacations an Opportunity for Business Development?

The Social Media Marshmallow Test

You Buy from People You Like. Really?

You and Santa Need the Same Thing

Ten Phrases to Motivate Anyone

What to Do When Your Best Isn’t Good Enough

Business Lessons from Black Friday

The Five-Step Mechanics of Creativity

Time for a Hackathon in Your Head

Don’t Take Things So Personally

Look in a Mirror Before You Judge

The Ten Keys to Unlocking Inspiration

Productivity Hacks from Cheeseburgers

Your Imperfections Are Your Competitive Advantage

Personal Branding: The Power of You

Desperate Thirst for Exclusivity

Company Culture & the Public Image

Teamwork Lessons from Monkeys

Rise of the Collaborative and Shared Economy

Six Tricks for Amazing Presentations

Does Your Tribe Have a Shared Interest?

Seven Ways to Reduce Stress at Work

Work & Exercise

Is Disruptive Learning Crucial to Transformational Career Progress?

Is Your Career Stuck in the Wrong Gear?

Does Doubt Help or Hinder Your Career?

Is Your Boss Taking You for Granted?

How Therapeutic Hobbies Can Power Your Career

Are You Likely to Lose Your Job?

Market Yourself: A Job Won’t Find You Anymore

Are You Too Important to Be Ill?

Put Away the Recruitment Top Trumps

Meet Opportunities Before They Arrive

A Career Lesson from Bird Seed

Why Solopreneurs Will Rule the World

Is Grammar Important for Career Progress Anymore?

Seven Bad Habits That Get People Fired

Why Everything Is an Investment in Your Career

The Myth of Multitasking

Is Likability Truly Essential?

Surviving Office Politics

Why We Need Competition at Work

What Is Your Storytelling Quotient?

How to Cold Call a Hiring Manager

Ten Signs That You Should Leave Your Job

Managing Change in Your Career

Why Do Your New Recruits Keep Leaving?

Acknowledgements

I have been influenced by a number of people in the making of this book. When I look back over the time spent writing this book, I realize the importance of my colleagues, professional network, and friends—without whom this book would simply not have been possible. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah, CXOTalk’s Michael Krigsman, and one of the most insightful people I know in the business world Mr. Murli Buluswar.

And lastly, but most importantly, thanks to Andrew R. Calderon for his exacting and comprehensive editing. He pored over every line of this text, and it is all the better for it.

Introduction

The story you tell about yourself affects how far you go in life. If you describe yourself in terms of failure, you are more likely to fail. If you describe yourself in terms of success, you are more likely to succeed. A pessimistic outlook assures a pessimistic perception and worldview. The opposite worldview assures the opposite effect. The story you tell about yourself isn’t all it takes to succeed, but it’s a large part of the equation.

The story you tell about yourself can get you through a rough patch. If you believe yourself to be a warrior, adaptable and capable, willing to learn new skills, meet new people, and accept that you have flaws and can accomplish your goals despite them—or even because of them—then you’re in a much better position than the average person to get where you want to be in your career. This description, however, doesn’t apply to the average person.

The average person operates with fear, skepticism, and is easily discouraged by defeat. It’s unsavory to say and it’s unsavory to accept. Frankly, some of life’s biggest and most important lessons are unpalatable. But that doesn’t make them any less insightful or true. For me, the journey of accepting my own imperfection has brought me to the place I am. I accept my imperfections as a catalyst for transformative growth and gains.

In this book, Grow - Develop Yourself for Success, I explore the often maligned approach to self help and career development that rests on the belief that our flaws and our imperfections can unlock our success. I won’t couch my language with feel-good terms. I won’t placate you. My goal here is to arm you with practical and potent tools for self-exploration so that you can achieve your goals and be better than you are now. Your new and improved story starts now.

CHAPTER 1

How to be Truly Innovative & Creative at Work and in Life

Creativity

It’s a feel-good term that has gotten a lot of traction recently. Like a song on the radio, it has gotten a little too much play and is now obscured by usage. What is creativity? And on that note, what is innovation? What is creative innovation?

Many organizations use these terms to describe their practice, their approach, their philosophy, but do they actually have a clear sense of what each or both mean?

I have a hunch that many of them don’t, and if they do, then it’s a narrow conception of creativity that doesn’t begin to cover the manifold experiences and perspectives that one might consider creative.

This isn’t just a matter of semantics. Not being clear on what creativity and innovation are has practical consequences on business structures, product and service offerings, and the very people we bring into our teams.

I wrote this chapter to address the ambiguity latent in present day usage, and to specify how we can incorporate creativity into our teams and organizations.

What Is Creativity and Innovation?

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford professor of business administration in the entrepreneurial management unit at Harvard Business School and a director of research there. According to Amabile, creativity is not necessarily an eccentric personality or a lover of art, nor is it a sign of intelligence. And even if it were, she infers, it isn’t necessarily good either.

To some this might be controversial, but it highlights an important point. There are myriad opinions about what creativity is, and not all of them are good. In fact, some may be conspicuously pernicious misperceptions that could lead organizations in the wrong direction or prevent you from integrating creativity into your organization altogether.

The point is that misperceptions abound, and they might be hampering our betterment in some way.

Let’s plot out common misperceptions to start with.

Perception: You have to be born with creativity.

Reality: Most creators and innovators have learned how to be creative.

Perception: Creative ideas come from eureka moments.

Reality: Creative moments are usually the culmination of a creative problem-solving progression.

Perception: You have to work in a heralded innovative organization in order to be creative.

Reality: Any organization can adopt innovative practices, and any individual can use creative methods independently.

Perception: Creativity doesn’t apply to business.

Reality: Creativity wins a lot more than it loses.

Perception: Creativity is creativity; it’s all the same.

Reality: All creativity is not created equal.

The demystification doesn’t clear up a crucial point though. What is creativity? Part of the problem is the question. Creativity isn’t a single thing. There are types of creativity.

There is artistic creativity, functional creativity, linguistic creativity, spatial creativity, etc. The idea that there is a creative disposition is also fraught. Many people are capable of operating within rigid constraints and still exercise their creativity. For some, this runs contrary to what creativity is. I think that has more to do with your stereotypes about creative personalities than anything else.

In the case of innovation, learning to work within constraints to then remake or break them is important. You can’t have at it ad hoc. You should at least be targeted. Lawyers are familiar with this kind of creativity. They need to think openly about the law, working within constraints by looking for alternatives, be that interpretations, clauses, language, possibilities, etc. That’s creativity right here. And in a business context, this kind of creativity is key.

For some, this kind of constraint creativity makes sense. For others, it might seem like a paradox.

I have six principles that might bring the conversation down to Earth for the skeptics.

Six Principles of Business Creativity

Pattern. Look for patterns in your life, your projects, and your tasks. Start with the most obvious patterns and expand from there. Often we want to see big, overarching trends, but that isn’t the best way to get your mind accustomed to this sort of thinking.

Solution. A solution can take many forms. There doesn’t even need to be a problem to provide a solution. A solution can be alternative, pure and simple. Someone wants options, possibilities, and each possibility you conceive is a solution to that desire. This is a mindset. Be solution-oriented. Believe that there are alternatives all around you. It’ll free your mind to play.

Trial-and-Error. One major downfall of large companies with defined and rigid work distribution is the near impossibility of trial-and-error. You may recognize that an alternative exists based on a pattern you’ve identified, but have no means of testing it.

That’s a problem. Nevertheless, you won’t know if something truly works until you try it and that’s okay. We can’t anticipate everything.

Combine. A stonewall to innovation is specialization. I know this is polemical. Some would say the opposite. I believe a sure-fire path to innovation is learning to think liberally about how ideas can coalesce to create new alternatives based on existing patterns, and it helps us create bridges where they didn’t exist. Bridges are good.

Variety. Keep your repository of ideas varied. Explore different fields and different perspectives. It is possible for our minds to stagnate. Stagnation impedes our ability to combine, find solutions, test ideas, and find patterns other than those that predominate in our mind. When you expose yourself to a variety of ideas, you can truly flourish and innovate.

Idea Generation. Your ideas don’t need to be complete when you pump them out. It’s okay to toss around just words, images, potential plans, and other such fragments. An idea board or the like will help you visualize your ideas and perform the abovementioned techniques more easily. Just generate ideas and as you go, they will surely take shape.

Remove. Once you’ve let your mind fly with all these possibilities, associations, and analogies, start paring away at the idea board. Remove the non-essential, the impractical, and the farfetched. Don’t toss them in the trash, though. Just set those ideas aside for future reference. What doesn’t work within current constraints may fit perfectly within future ones.

Unity. Ultimately, what you seek is unity or harmony, not perfection. Nothing will be perfect, but it can be unified and harmonious even if varied and imperfect. Make sure that your ideas flow logically, align feasibly, and propose a different—albeit possibly unfinished solution—to a present dilemma or uncertainty.

Roadblocks to Creativity in the Workplace

All this is wonderful to consider and imagine in a vacuum, but some of our jobs don’t allow for all the approaches I outlined above. That’s precisely why innovation is extolled as such a virtue and why creativity has been regarded as revolutionary. It forces us to rail against established power structure, institutionalized practices, and ornery people. If you decide to embark on that journey in a context that demands obedience, it’ll take you down a road of self-exploration and tribulation.

Some roadblocks to creativity in a workplace are

Lack of collective will. A lack of purpose in the group can hinder movement, creativity, and productivity.

Individual and group bias. Be aware of the assumptions and stereotypes that predominate in your workplace. They may be difficult to navigate, but not doing so can seriously stymie your efforts toward innovation.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. The worst thing you can do is to hold yourself back. If you assume you will fail from the get-go, then you are dooming yourself to failure. To innovate or rail against habit, you must recognize your ability to do so by galvanizing the people around you.

Operational practices and procedural practices. There is a big difference. Operational practices are those that ensure and direct the overall function of a department or company. Procedural practices dictate protocol within a specific department and at the individual level. Identify which one you want to approach creatively. It can make presenting your ideas easier, so you don’t scare people away or make them nervous about backlash.

Accepted truths. There must be accepted truths for things to work. Some are less favorable than others, though. Identify what the accepted truths are, whether they need to be revised or eliminated, to what end, and why. In a business, revision geared toward the bottom-line and productivity tends to gain more traction and acceptance.

Lack of time. You are just too busy. Then get a group of people to help you. In fact, whenever possible you should start a team effort. Solidarity is the wellspring of motivation when times get tough. By identifying and delegating tasks, you can make great things happen.

Intolerance to questions. Some people do not like being questioned or having questions lodged at them about work related to them. In other words, they take it personally. A way around this is to frame questions impersonally or to specify that questions about operations and procedures hinge less so on the individual and more so on systemic functions.

Circumvent the Roadblocks

In general, the way you present the products of your creative scrutiny has an impact on reception. A way around the roadblocks I described is to be clear, concrete, and systematic about the problem you’d like to approach creatively.

Define the challenge. Spend a considerable amount of time identifying what, exactly, you want to reconsider or analyze. The more concrete, clear, and systematic you can be, the more likely you are to garner support and hold attention.

Brainstorm. Open up to brainstorming with other people. You can be the catalyst for change and not necessarily have to lead it. Often times, good ideas gain momentum independent of the originator because they resonate with enough people that unify.

Discovery. If you realize you feel lost after brainstorming, that’s a good sign. It probably means that there are real questions that don’t have answers which represent holes in your operations, procedures, or business model. The disorientation is a good thing in the long run.

Broader context. This is one way to get past the discovery phase. When you realize that you don’t have the answers or that the resources at your disposal are insufficient to resolve the emergent uncertainties, seek out pieces to cobble together the bigger picture. Customers, industry trends, new experts, history, speculation, etc., can all help you glean