Redefine success with perspective and control

I was always surprised at the learning capabilities of few of my employees, while most did not scale up inspite of every opportunity and condition being the same. We conduct surveys for employee satisfaction every year and a large section of the employees continue to complain on two key points. ‘Company is not fair in giving us the money that they actually deserve’ and ‘Promotions are not happening in a fair way and managers are playing favorites’.

Such an input coming year after year even though we went ahead changing old systems of appraisal and promotions fundamentally. We made everything very transparent and something that gave equal opportunity to one and all. But even then, the two complaints remained the same. I was left wondering as to why most of my employees still think the way they think, even though we remained one of the best pay masters and one of the best in people practices.

We were sure that we promoted the best guys and gave high increase in salaries to those who stood out. We also ensured that every employee got equal opportunity to reach at the highest place of achievement and even put the job of our leaders to ensure that more and more employees moved up in the bracket of success. While our quality of people improved and overall things became better, the two complaints struck out like always.

It was one fine day that I happened to see an article on David Allan’s matrix of self management that made me sit-up and think and things started falling in place.

This matrix clearly explains why some people are what they are in their professional and almost always in their personal life too. Their success and failures are clearly understood with only two things that controls their professional and most likely their personal life too.

Every human being wants to have control of their life and whatever they do in their life. However, what do they need the control for? They need it to achieve the vision of their lives that they wanted to achieve. The perspective that guides their professional and personal life is the second big factor that plays key role in making a person what they are. This is where the matrix clearly defines four kind of people.

1. A Victim or Reactor: Such people do not have any perspective of why they are doing things they do every day. At the same time, they feel that do not have any control on things as well. All such people look themselves upon as victims and others see them as those who simply whine and react over things that otherwise are so normal. If we happen to be in a company that is not a great place to work, we will find a vast majority falling in this category. They define the genes of the company by being a victim all the time. In case if the leader too happens to be in this category, you must jump the ship immediately.
2. Visionary or Crazy innovator: A lot of people have great vision and can clearly articulate as to what should be done to reach the goal. However if they lack the adequate clout or control to make things happen, they normally get identified as either a visionary or a crazy person who simply talks things that is not easy for victims to understand. If you happen to be one of them, instead of getting pulled down to a category of a victim, look at help that can make you a leader.
3. Micro Manager: Who does not know what a micro manager means. All those who look at authority and control beyond anything else and clearly have little idea as to what the perspective of doing the things they all do is, can be termed as micro managers. Many of us ourselves face some kind of micro managers in our own bosses. It is only a question of the manager being a habitual and perpetual micro manager or someone who gets down to micro manage only when things go out of control. Habitual micromanagers must look at improving their control freak tendency to more of delegation and move to become true leaders.
4. Commanders or leaders: We all respect and want to follow those who have clear vision and have control to achieve the vision. Such people are clearly the leaders. We must identify such leaders and try to be with them as they will give you success and teach you to be successful.

Let us use this matrix to redefine our own goals and aim to become leaders in our professional and personal lives.

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