Give, More than you Get!! Feb
9, 2004
A wonderful realization dawned on me this
weekend, about something essential for our sustained growth and happiness…
It started a couple of weeks ago with a
comment I heard about NIP where the boredom being voiced was – “This EVA session
is so boring. We don’t understand any of
the terminology and it all doesn’t make any sense.” My spontaneous response was – “It is all
about ‘appreciating’ what you can.
Everyone in the session is getting the same exposure. Ultimately, if you can appreciate more than
others, you will have learned more than them.”
It was also in the context of relationships that I realized this, but it
applies across everything we do as well.
The realization was – “Give, more than you get”.
We’re seeing all around us the issues of the
new world, where people are ‘trading’ for everything. Kids trade their good behavior for goodies,
Families trade in visits and favors, People trade in relationships, and
Employees trade for work. I realized that
at the core of effectiveness in our behavior, our relationships, and our work,
is the innate desire of each one of us to “Give, more than we get”. And this leads naturally to getting
more.
Maybe we’ve just put the cart before the
horse and said to ourselves “I want more first, before I give”! This of course, doesn’t take the cart
anywhere J and we see relationships withering, and growth stagnating. And it is also clear that because you need
two to tango, this ‘trading’ is detrimental even if one of the two falls prey
to it for some time. To be able to
sustain the relationship through such times, it takes a leader in the other to
continue to give until the other can come around to giving more than they get. What do you think?
For
People
“It is all about ‘appreciating’ what you can.” – stayed on in my mind and I realized that everything that is commonly supposed to ‘appreciate’, like real estate, or stock prices, appreciates because people think highly of them and share their perception with others. It is only the appreciation that people give to these things that makes them appreciate!
Appreciation is what helps us give more than we get. It is ‘appreciation’ that is the ‘more’. When people do something for what they get,
what you (as the orgn) have done is to give for what
you got. The Appreciation you provide is
what must be the ‘more’ YOU give.
This also leads to realizing that we usually do not appreciate those contributions or aspects of people that do not directly contribute to what we ourselves are appreciated for. This makes our operations very difficult to sustain, because then all we end up doing is take a part of the appreciation we get, and pass it on to others who made it possible. This sure might appreciate some parts, but is not always the best or the only thing to appreciate. For example, there’s no point appreciating an author for helping to meet revenue targets, because the person is not able to identify what they should continue to do. It would be better and more rewarding to appreciate what it was that the person did which might have subsequently led to meeting revenue targets. E.g. it might have been the wonderful script the person wrote, just the way it was needed, with very few review iterations needed on it. We need to appreciate what we would like more of.
If we don’t know what to appreciate for our success, we’d
better find out before we depreciate our assets to an extent that they are won
over by ‘competition’. We need to
appreciate what people think they have done well.
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Doing favours at work
The
gift relationship
Apr
7th 2004
From The Economist print edition
Why
workers who do favours are more productive
IS GENEROSITY good for you? At work, at least, the answer may be
yes. There, says a recent article in the Academy of Management Journal,
productivity rises when workers help each other more.
Francis Flynn, of
Columbia University's business school, studied 161 engineers working for a
telecoms firm near San Francisco. They work in eight teams, but each
individually sorts out detailed engineering problems sent in from around the
country. Mr Flynn asked each employee to report how
often they swapped help with each member of the team—help such as technical
advice or taking a second look at a recommended solution—and who, in each case,
had given relatively more in their exchanges. Thus, he looked separately at the
frequency with which individual workers made such swaps and at how one-sidedly
generous they were. He also asked employees to rate how highly they regarded
one another.
Mr Flynn correlated the
answers he got with information from the firm on employees' productivity. He
found that generous employees who get little in exchange are well-regarded by
colleagues. Employees who helped colleagues generously but did not receive help
in exchange were less productive. Those who receive as well as give were
relatively more productive, particularly those who helped each other most
often. A pattern of frequent giving and receiving boosted both productivity and
social standing.
Why should
productivity rise when employees frequently swap help? Mr
Flynn has two explanations. First, as employees learn more about the resources
they can offer each other, they develop a more efficient pattern of requesting
and giving help. Second, helpful employees learn to trust each other more, and
so become willing to do bigger favours because they
feel more sure about the likelihood of reciprocation. And, of course, it is
nicer to work with helpful people than with the other sort.
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Copyright © 2004 The
Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. |
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“Treat people as they are, and they will remain what they are. Treat them as they should be, and they will become what they could be.” – Anon.
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As I understand it, appreciate seems to have roots in ap-preci-ate, ‘ap’ coming from après - French for after, ‘preci’ from précis – summary highlighting main points, and ‘ate’ from create – after-precis-create -> To appreciate something seems to mean - to create a précis after something has happened or been done. This definitely makes it important to include in the appreciation the aspects that are being complimented, else it is just a general compliment, and can not be called appreciation. In fact, it might be mis-interpreted and you will get more of something you did not want in the first place. J
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What Webster says about Appreciate…
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For Business, and
in Our Business
If you look at what the trade is in our business, what we get from a customer, and what we give back... the customer gives us money for our time, and inputs about the problem they want to solve, so that we can build a solution for them. This is true of all businesses, whether FMCG, FIP, or Knowledge Solutions. What the business does is to understand the problem well enough so they can solve it in the best mutual interests with all the resources they have available and invested in the business.
It is important for us to realize that the customer has paid fairly and enough for us to spend our time and resources in building the solution. Then what is it that we can (or need to) give, more than what we have got? It is the appreciation we have for the customer’s problem!! The value we add is of our understanding of the problem that the customer is facing. This is a value we add not only to the customer’s solution, but also to ourselves, as learning that empowers us in the future to provide better, or bigger solutions to more customers. This understanding of ours is what our learning is. We need to LEARN, to add value to the inputs we get, and the knowledge we have.
If we think we can get by in meeting our business growth goals without appreciating the problems of our customers, we will only confirm our customers’ fears – that we are a good procedure execution center, and not adding any of the value we promise to them.
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The game of Broken Squares amply demonstrates the value of giving. I first played this game at a team training in 1997, conducted by Gagan Adlakha and Arjun Shekhar for the LSB Products team held at Essex Farms.
The game goes like this…
The entire group, say 30 people, is split into teams of 5 each, and seated at their own round tables around the room. Each team is handed five packets (one for each member) of plastic pieces which are random triangles cut from five squares. When sorted out and put together correctly, they would make five squares that are identical in their dimensions.
Each member opens her/his packet and examines the pieces to see if they fit into a jigsaw to make a square. The pieces have been distributed across different members so they will need to exchange pieces to make their squares.
The rules of the game are…
- No one can say anything or gesture in any way to communicate with fellow members.
- No one can take or pull a piece from another member, unless s/he gives it to them.
- You can give to anyone you like.
- No one can refuse any piece they are given.
The winning team is the one that completes all the squares earliest.
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