During my professional journey of past 19 years, of learning and unlearning and yet learning again, there are few things I deeply believe have helped me shape up as a better human being with more clarity of thought and action. This thought of ‘practices’ always starts a debate within me. So, below I will dissect this piece into five points, trying to address the importance of imbibing practices – Best v/s Next. The word ‘best’ is ofcourse the best, but the X factor lies in how we hear the ‘knock of the next’ and build on it.
What we think and What we listen
Well, yes, the ignition happens with ‘What’. However, what makes it tick is ‘How’. For e.g. if we mean to take an informed decision on something which is expected to have a potential personal or business impact, then being cognizant about it starts with ‘What’. The ‘how we listen’ and ‘how we think’ part will help take the best possible decision. This ‘how’ part is the next practice as it needs us to listen better and evaluate shades of the impact of a decision, before the actual decision.
Communication and Commitment
These two are sides of the same coin. What we interpret, how we want our message to reach our audience, how we translate, transfer that information, our text, our language, our feel, our soul, how we make someone feel, the empathy, how we build trust, the stimulus to response equation – these are some of the micro elements that build this million dollar coin. E.g. let’s get real. How many times have we come across a situation like this, be it business or personal -‘I will call you back in 10 minutes’. Two things happen here – either the call never comes back or comes back the next day or the week after. And this is just one basic example to state that it is important for us to keep revisiting at Communication and Commitment at all levels and all channels. Out here, the ability to anticipate the Turn Around Time on commitments and communicating to set the right expectations will be the next practice.
Tackling Unprecedented Change
Technologies seem to be re-writing the rule book in everything we are doing and today at many places we seem to be struggling to articulate these shifts. The leap from a pre-connectivity era to this post-hyperconnected era is not a leap but a brisk walk with dynamic thoughts. Amazon, Uber, Tesla, Paytm, Oyo, Airbnb, Alibaba, just to name a few have one thing in common. They thought about the next practice first rather than best practice and that’s how they lived in the blue ocean for a while and tackling the Red Ocean head-on by imbibing agility, pace, enterprise architecture, stability, predictability, discipline and cross-discipline collaboration with consumer at the centre of enhancing experience.
ROI or ROR
Well, both! When I read the masterpiece book ‘Return on Relationship’ by Ted Rubin & Kathryn Rose, I simply became a fan of it to the extent that I keep reading it still from time to time. Day in and day out we all keep Return on Investment in mind. Why is it so that we take our relationships in the form of – ‘I will reach out to you only when I know you can do something for me’. I have seen fewer people with the approach of keeping the spark on, dropping in a hello, catching up, keeping trust as the pedestal. I can say this for myself for sure as ROR builds a heart-to-heart connect and I believe that this connect forms the DNA of any relationship. So here, ROI is the best practice and ROR is the next practice.
Your Unique Currency
Last but not the least, build your unique currency. Be it staying relevant, trust, empathy, diversity…anything that forms the foundation to your culture and equity. This along with a clear distinction as to what you are solving today and the preparedness to solve for tomorrow will be the next practice.
The views expressed here are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect that of Reputation Today.
Ankoor believes in the power of Energy and Energize while bringing to the table a pedigree of 23 years with a rare combination experience across the spectrum of media - print, digital, mobile, event productions & successful pilot projects. Worked across functions - ad operations, business operations, content, strategy, sales, events, media planning & buying. Ankoor has been part of six Sigma Green Belt project and also worked in cross functional roles with - conglomerates and start-ups. Ankoor has been part of the core pilot team of launching International IPs such as ad:tech, iMedia Summits and TechCrunch events in India. Ankoor has directed and enabled the winning of multiple pitches while actively involved in overall and tactical strategy. Trained from Dale Carnegie in Mentoring, Ankoor is a knowledge manager, avid writer with more than 50 published articles: speaker and jury in multiple forums including reputed B-Schools. Most recently Ankoor has been onboarded on the Advisory Board -Marketing Department at ISBR Business School. Ankoor is POSH Certified and has been selected to be part of core Committee for POSH at 2 organizations during his work tenure till now. Ankoor is also a Tabla player and wishes to sky-dive more often.
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