Guide to build your life Purpose?

All of us are aware of the importance of Purpose driven life.

All the team members I have come across, I share my purpose and enable them to build their own.

If you read the well-known people they live for a purpose.

Let all the team members build their own purpose.

We as a leader build our own purpose.

Every organization, the department has its own purpose.

Now to build our Purpose or refine our purpose, we may use a few questions to be answered and the same can be used when you coach your team members

“Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs”

~Stephen Covey, ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’

• What were you passionate about as a youngster?
• What did you find emotionally fulfilling when you were younger?
• If you didn’t have to work, and you weren’t allowed to stay in the house, how would you choose to spend that time?
• What drives you to forget about the nature around you?
• What themes do you admire to study about? 
• What kind of remarks do you have with your dearest associates?
• Are there any topics that you frequently bring up to communicate about? 
• What do you choose to accomplish before you die? 
• If you had a dream, could you create it to take place?
• What Are You willing to Battle for?
• How Are You Going to Save the World?
• What are part of your adventures you feel appreciative of and you choose to replay it repeatedly?
• What are the numerous ways you have been impacting other people’s existence?
• After one or two decades you choose to record your accomplishment, what you will be recording?
• What you will perform free of cost?
• What do you choose to know for?
• What are your dreams and they are shaping you now and will shape tomorrow?
• What activities when you do, and you put always 150%?
• What you choose to die for?
• What encourages you to travel out of your comfort zone?
• When you get resistance, for what reason you present your 100% to bounce back or push back hard?
• Who is your idol, and why do you cherish this individual?
• What are my core values and beliefs?
• If you recognized you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you choose to be remembered?
• What makes you out of bed in the morning and what keeps you up at night? what energizes you?
• If you have all the capital that is required, how you will allocate your time?

At the end of this exercise you will find tremendous energy and you will get an intrinsic drive to do better and bigger. Give it a try and do it more often.

Variety can destroy Variety

Variety is commonly a descriptor of the volume of potential states within a system.

The variety grows exponentially with the magnitude of organizations and major systems, creating massive extents of complexity with regard to its interactions.

Variety is a measure of complexity.

Ashby’s Law:

W. Ross Ashby was a British cyberneticist and psychologist who, during the 1960s, proposed law with regard to levels of variety and regulation within biological systems. In his words:

When the variety or complexity of the environment exceeds the capacity of a system (natural or artificial) the environment will dominate and ultimately destroy that system.

In order to handle accordingly with the diversity of problems the world throws at you, you require to have a repertoire of responses that are (at least) as nuanced as the problems you face.

Requisite Variety: Requisite means basic or recommended. So requisite variety suggests that you require a specific amount of information for some purpose.

Law of requisite variety: If a system is to be stable, the number of states of its control mechanism must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled.

For organizations and teams, Ashby’s law effectively means that they must invariably remain more flexible with their approaches to strategy and operation than the levels of structure and complexity within their systems and operating environment. Sometimes this variety is modest, but occasionally it can be enormous, and thus it is up to the organizations, teams, and the leaders within them to gauge the suitability of their present systems for the environment they operate in.

If the systems which regulate don’t have enough (or requisite) variety to contest the complexity of the regulated, then regulation will fail. The system will be out of control.

All these reasons help us to deal with a complex system.

As a leader, we require to figure out the prevailing complexity of the system and assure a variety of mechanism to handle with the complexity.

Organizations have two choices suitable in shaping for requisite variety - Amplification and Attenuation.

Source: Global Risk Insights

Amplification: Amplification is where the team sets up collaboration with diverse agents in its external environment to strengthen its expertise to respond to stimuli. To amplify variety, we need to empower subordinates, hire more experienced employee, Train existing employees, and Collaborate with external agents etc

Attenuation: Reduction of the variety of possible disturbances given to the essential variables.To attenuate variety, we can Standardize communication and Standardize processes etc.

I am sure most of us are engaged in some of the other ways of dealing with such complexity. As a Leader of a complex system, we must know this and apply this for our own development. Sometimes team members will ask why scaling agile has so many events in the system? this will explain to address complex system, we need to have many meaningful events and leaders should facilitate such events for better results.

Leaders, do you know your Self?

The Ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” (Greek: γνῶθι σεαυτόν, translated: gnōthi seauton; also ... σαυτόν … sauton with the ε contracted), is one of the Delphic maxims and was carved in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi according to the Greek author Pausanias.

Leadership scholar Warren Bennis, in his study of how successful people learned to become leaders, mentioned that self-knowledge is an essential part of defining a leader’s integrity. ‘‘To become a leader, then, you must become yourself; become the maker of your own life.’’

He discovered that knowing yourself is ‘‘the most difficult task any of us faces. But until you truly know yourself, strengths and weaknesses, know what you want to do and why you want to do it, you cannot succeed in any but the most superficial sense of the word.’’

The dictionary defines self-awareness as the conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

Before knowing anything else, we require to know our-self first. We need to know our weaknesses, strengths, beliefs, and desires in life. Keeping in touch with our emotions means we have to be self-aware.

Every leader first they experience themselves before they support others. All of us are leaders, either we coach someone else to become leaders, but first, we have to identify ourselves. 

“As my awareness increases, my control over my own being increases.”

– William Schutz

Few questions to seek to identify our inner self and record them down:

• Who I am? 
• Why Do I signify?
• Why do I get out of bed each day?
• What do I think about myself?
• What do I appreciate about myself?
• Am I a respectable person?
• Who loves me?
• What do I choose to be printed on my gravestone?
• How would I describe the purpose of life?
• Do I feel inspired by someone or something?
• What qualities do I value in life?
• What is life asking of me?
• Who are the most prominent individuals in my life?
• How do I measure my self-worth? 
• Do I know what my talents are?
• What’s my most noteworthy accomplishment?
• What am I good at? 
• Do I realize what I enjoy performing?
• What do I regret doing?
• What am I bad at?
• What makes me glad?
• What makes me angry?
• What makes me unhappy?
• What makes me afraid?
• What stresses me out?
• What relaxes me?
• How do I want others to perceive me?
• What do I desire to alter about myself?
• How would I express my childhood?
• What worries me most about the future?
• What type of individual do I choose to be?
• What type of partner do I want to be?
• How would my best friend describe you?
• Do I have a goal?
• What’s my interpretation of success?
• What is my biggest strength?
• What is your biggest weakness?
• Does it truly matter what others think about me?
• Have I made someone smile today?
• Whose support do I rely on?
• How do I invest the majority of my time?
• Who has had the greatest impact on my life?
• Am I leading my life for myself?
• Do you feel attached to my community?

“Self-awareness is one of the rarest of human commodities. I don’t mean self-consciousness where you’re limiting and evaluating yourself. I mean being aware of your own patterns.”

– Tony Robbins

Thus, strengthening self-awareness takes time, a lot of effort and practice. It demands a person to pay attention to his/her own personality and behavior.

Finest time to discover your Self!! Stay at home and explore your self!

“How hurtful it can be to deny one’s true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” – June Ahern 

This is the finest chance to identify who you are. 

This time effectively utilized with help all of us in the subsequent days to remain compatible and deal with the world in a stronger manner.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ―Aristotle

Once you know yourself, you will become more confident, you will understand your purpose, and you will start producing a bigger impact on the world.

When we know who we are, we learn what we desire to perform.

The finest and most important adventure of our lives is identifying who we really are.

In order to discover who we are and why we act the way we do, we have to identify our own story. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

“The greatest discoveries are those that shed light unto ourselves.”

Albert Einstein once said this: 

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

You have to figure out yourself and identify your strengths.

Are we fish struggling to climb the tree or fish in the ocean and exploring the ocean and continuing our life what it meant to be!

Author Neale Donald Walsch:

“Your soul is who you are. Your body and your mind are what you use to experience who you are in the Realm of the Relative.”

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao Tzu

At the foundation of our desires is living a life of purpose and meaning.

Sit alone for some time as we have the opportunity now to explore our inner self. We are restricted to be at home and it is wonderful moment to discover ourselves.

Be quiet and observe your true self. You cannot and will not be able to identify yourself until you take the time to be still. Once the mind is calm and not much distracted your true self will surface out.

Take inventory.

Buy a diary or notebook and reflect on your life so far. What have you attained? Do you have any major fears? Are you struggling against real obstacles? Have you set reasonable objectives? List down everything and identify which section has better to focus now. 

Discover your Passions:

Note down all the work you preferred to achieve. And plan to start all those passions which trigger your inner self. Write it down.

Think about your hobby:

Look inside and analyze what hobby you choose to start, painting, playing music, writing, cooking, etc, retrospect and note down to commence with one now. 

Read self-discovery books.

Start by becoming familiarized with the concept of self-discovery. Learn the meaning of a personal inventory and how to handle what you find. Reading books about the discovery of self will open new doors of insight and understanding. Read those books and write your thoughts. 

Evaluate your relationships.

A substantial aspect of identifying our personality can be identified in our relationships. When we understand we will never truly know anyone else until we recognize our self, the usefulness of recognizing our self becomes even more visible.

You can ask a few dominant questions to identify yourself better

1. What I am known for?
2. What about myself do I admire most?
3. Classify what I cherish most doing?
4. Identify what brings me joy
5. What prospects of my life do I choose to see a transformation in?
6. What did I choose to accomplish?
7. What are my fears?
8. What am I thankful for?
9. Am I content working out what I’m presently working?
10. What are the most remarkable things I’ve gained in life?
11. Who inspires me the most and what is it that inspires me about them?
12. What do I believe in?
13. What have I accomplished in my life that I am most proud of?
14. What is my biggest core value?
15. How do I feel about your parents?
16. Let me write my own obituary. What I will be writing?

Self-discovery contributes to self-mastery.

Write your own biography:

We can work out this as a mental exercise or in a paper, but the idea is to choose a devoted look backward on our own past as objectively as desirable. Take the time to investigate the choices we have made and question why we made them. Study about the comment we have obtained from colleagues and co-workers. Most specially, even though, be tough on ourselves and sink into our disappointments. When we are walking through that biography, study about how we have been greedy, unpleasant, or cruel. Study about why we were that way. The outcome is to have a better sense of ourselves, so root out as much as we can from our own past. Once we have that biography in hand, we might be astonished at just how much we didn’t know about ourselves before we started.

Leaders, Do not tell us, Show us what to Change.

Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand - Chinese Proverb.

Why some of the transformation initiatives are not successful?

What I have been seen, the transformation roadmap steps have been developed somewhere in a close room in the headquarters with some great minds.

Now the same assumptions and directions have come to us with an instruction to enforce the same, What to do and how to go on?

We (The Agile coaches) have been asked to follow the order, and we have received the order to numerous departments and telling them to follow the order of transformation!

Workers with the (Business units) department are perplexed as some of the activities are not aligning with their ways of working or vision. We are also discovering the challenges! the close room designed plan is not matching in a specific context. Due to the cultural and Ego clash, individuals are not eager to acknowledge the mistake!

Leaders are pressuring why things are not progressing? by this time miracle should have taken place! Who to blame?

So they started searching for the scapegoats, someday, we got the scapegoat, some time execution process to be blamed for the transformation failure.

Few of the root cause we noticed, but headquarters are not granting us to deviate the path as they might have lost the power.

People tend to resists changes if those changes are thrust upon them.

Telling is like thrusting changes on them.

When we tell, the signals pass, this is the better way of doing, your current ways of working is incorrect. This provokes resistance in the mind as it hurts the self-esteem of the people who are working at the grass-root level.

The magnitude of resistance is expected to be inversely proportioned to our level of self-esteem.

It depends on how the team members at grass root level feel about themselves with the unique changes.

They essentially act in reaction, reactive thinking is most of the time due to low self-esteem.

The creative thinker does not resist changes.

So the telling approach will have tremendous resistance which leads to a lot of waste of time and energy.

So what do we do? A different approach. 

what is that?

How can we alter the telling to show? How can we change telling to involving?

Let us use lean thinking, where people who are with the system, they realize what changes we require. People in the team possess vast knowledge, wisdom, creativity, and energy. Best leaders access the wealth of experience and empower their people through the effective use of the questions.

Based on our experience what is functioning in the approach which are:

When we tell people what to and how to do it, there is an inclination to resist.

When ideas come from the people they will support it

When we tell, it is giving the message that they are doing something which is wrong and they become more defensive.

When we ask the team to provide input they get encouraged and they become more creative and they get in buy-in

For any such transformation change initiative, we first call for the workshop with all the team members. we do 1-2 days workshop to discover the problem and later we do a solution workshop.

Where we all together come out to figure out what best works for us.

We start the experiment and determine what is best applicable to our environment.

As an expert, we become mentors and facilitate the session.

Where ever require we do training, coaching and mentor the team member?

It works best as a team co-create the solutions.

I am sure you might have also experienced similar types of approach and with the design thinking approach, this has become much easier to implement and get the buy-in from the people easily.