How to tackle office politics

Here are some tips to tackle office politics (by CA Chhaviraj Joshi)

1. Be polite with your subordinates and others. Understand clearly that people around you are human beings and not robots or machine.They also have heart. They can also make errors. Don’t shout or become angry on them.

2. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. Don’t interfere with other people’s work.

3. Speak only the matter which is important. Unnecessary talk will waste your and other’s time and energy.

4. Don’t always go for the obvious. Consider the moral aspect also. This ability of distinguishing what is right and what is wrong will be developed when you get matured slowly, till that time take the guidance of your parents, elders and teachers.

5. Always be honest with the employer. Give the most of your output so that he is satisfied with your performance. Let all the thousands of employees of the company be against you, if you are with the employer, then you are doing your duty properly.

In this context one quote of the great Politician Chanakya is worth mentioning:

“A moon can give more light that thousands of stars cannot. Similarly a learned and cultured son is far better that hundreds of son deprived of good qualities.”

Following the lawful orders of the employer, can be learnt from this small story:

A Gurkha soldier, from the British Army was severely wounded during the war and was on the verge of death. The doctors met the Commander Chief and told that the Gurkha will die unless he shows some will to live.

The Commander Chief immediately rushed into the room where the wounded Gurkha was lying, and barked, “live”.

And the Gurkha obeyed.

6. Don’t waste time worrying about what others think about you. They are, on the contrary thinking, what you think about them. 

7.  If criticism is getting you down, always remember, “A statue was not erected in honor of a critic”

8. Utilize your free time for knowledge up-gradation, instead of gossiping.

9. Don’t try to be superman and fight if there is a clash, go through proper channel, like HR, Manager, Director etc. If all the methods are not workable, then go by Tit for Tat method.

10. All the good people should not always tolerate injustice. One of our Indian Saints has once said that “If we take MALA (for chanting GOD’s name), then sometimes we should take BHALA (weapon) also.” 

11.  I will end this article with this very important statement:

“ALL MEN CAN SEE THESE TACTICS WHEREBY I CONQUER, BUT WHAT NONE CAN SEE IS THE STRATEGY OUT OF WHICH VICTORY IS EVOLVED” 

How can we become a big thinker?

When success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, pounds or in term of their family background or wealth, people are measured in term of the size of their thinking. The bigger people think and act, more successful will they be.

The question is: How can we think Big?

In this blog post, I will share ideas from David Schwartz book, The Magic of Thinking Big!

A practical exercise

Here is a practical exercise which is used in certain motivational training workshops by David Schwartz which can be used by us too:

1. What are our five chief assets or qualities? We need to list them down.

We can take help of any our our friend or some one who can assess us. Those qualities may include our education or a particular skill or appearance or home life or any other item.

2. We need to write down names of three people who don’t have any of those assets but are still successful in life. (We need to look around and think hard on this but believe me, we will find some people who don’t have the qualities we have but those people are still successful)

David Schwartz says that once we complete the above exercise, we will realize that we outrank many people in life!  We have certain qualities and certain assets which are not available with many successful people. If this is the case, we can be successful too.

Big Thinker’s style of talking:

Big thinkers are able to create a positive picture in minds of other people even when there is no good news to tell e.g. Instead of saying: We incurred a big expense, big thinkers say: We made a big investment!

Or, instead of saying that: We are afraid to report that we failed, big thinkers say: We need to make another attempt.

Let’s think of the situation when a person comes to us and say that we face a big problem.

This will create an image of despair and gloom. Instead this can be phrased as: We have a challenge to deal with.

In order to be a ‘big thinker’, we need to create positive mental pictures – all the time!

We need to look at things not as they are in the present but what could those things be in the future.

An architect visualizes a house which is not built yet. An entrepreneur visualizes a successful business when there is no business plan on paper. A painter constructs a master piece in mind first before putting it on paper.

Why can’t we visualize success when it is yet to come?

Let’s try this: Whenever we have an issue or challenge, let’s use the words which create a positive picture and not a negative one.

ambitious people - coaching, mentoring, training for finance professionals: Read Coach Chris Latest Article - Do you fear publ...

ambitious people - coaching, mentoring, training for finance professionals: Read Coach Chris Latest Article - Do you fear publ...: "Do you fear public speaking? Find out the 3 area's that you must know to be a competent speaker, and learn Coach Chris top 7 tips for contro..."

5 tips for effective listening

As a child we all learn to talk but we only learn to listen when our parents tell us that they won’t buy us a particular toy and then…….. what happens?
Most of the children start crying!
Do we learn how to listen effectively?
During my professional career, one of the things I have learnt is to listen. I would like to add that listening is not hearing or if you remain silent and wait for your turn to speak, it is also not effective listening. One of the ways in which effective listening may be explained is the way in which we listen to the other person fully, analyze what is being said, ask gentle question to get full picture and then frame our response or utterance.
5 tips which we may consider to develop effective listening skills include:
1. Get comfortable with silence
Why silence?
Silence mean not to think about shooting the answer when the other person stops speaking but silence is a state which enables a person to think, analyze and re-think before speaking.
Silence has its own language!.
Once a person is silent and let his / her thoughts focus on an issue and start analyzing with open mind, better solutions come into consideration – try practicing silence and enjoy the comfort!
2. Listen for differences
At time we don’t want to listen to someone who is saying something which we don’t want to listen. Lets try to listen to differences with patience. People have their opinions and we have ours. Believes take shape over the period of time and are influenced by the nature of education, environment and experience. The way we think is different from the way other people may think about the same situation or event.
Therefore, differences must be tolerated and understood.
3. Listen between the words
At times, people might not be saying what they are saying! Their body language may be sending some signals which are not consistent with their speck. Therefore, we should try to listen between the words. Context and content – both are required to be taken into consideration.
4. Ask smart questions
We may try to listen better by asking smart questions and gather more information before proposing any solution. Instead of giving opinion, one of the ways to listen effectively is to get clarifications and develop better understanding of the issue at hand.
5. Break the ‘I’ habit and ‘shoulding’
At times, we try to explain our position to the person who is speaking to us. We may also tend to advice people instead of asking questions and leading the person towards solution by asking the right questions again and again and getting the person to think and analyze. This may sound to be difficult first but once we try practicing it, we will see wonders!
Happy listening! (By Malik Mirza)

How to pass exams? 7 useful tips

7 tips to pass exams (By Malik Mirza).
Being a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA), Certified Accountant (ACCA, UK), Management Accountant (CIMA, UK) and Certified Internal Auditor (CIA, USA), I consider that passing exams require a particular skill set which is easy to learn.
One of our teachers told us: You have whole life to study but only six months to pass this paper. So, concentrate on understanding what examiner wants.
Here are 7 tips to help every student pass exams, based on my personal experience:
1.       No limiting belief please
-          Remove the limiting belief that you can’t pass.
-          If you believe you can pass or you believe you cannot pass, you are right.
-          I have seen students under the impression that examiner is their enemy. Please don’t think so. Pass percentage might be low, but students do pass their exams. So, don’t think that you will be in a failure category ever.
2.       Understand the structure of paper
-          First of all, understand the structure of paper – is there any marks allocation for a particular topic?
-          Secondly, if there is marks allocation, is examiner following it? The best thing to do is to review the past five papers.
-          What is the key topic i.e. examiner’s favorite? Is there any article by examiner in the Students’ Accountant or any other relevant student magazine? Study that topic and prepare for it, even if you don’t like it!
3.       Taking notes
-          Prepare for exams by way of ‘notes’ which you can recall quickly at the time of taking exam. This will help in two manner. First, when you write, you are in better picture of giving your mind instruction through written letters. Secondly, you can revise from your notes instead of opening the book when exam day is near. Here is my strategy for taking notes:
-          Take a paper and turn it in landscape format.
-          Put three columns in landscape form.
-          Once done, take synopsis of a chapter in smaller fonts and the language which you can easily understand.
-          Write bullet points, important concepts and key ideas which you need to remember.
-          These notes should be used at the time when paper is on head and you need to revise whole subject in two to three hours.
4.       Remembering / memorizing key ideas and formulae
-          One of the key ideas to memorize ideas e.g. formulae, is to write them in small charts and hang it in front of your bed.
-          See those formulae daily before going to bed and rising up.
-          Use different colours and markers.
-          Believe me, in my statistics paper, I was recalling the formulae in the exact colours which I wrote on charts.
5.       Exam practice
-          Practice mock exam – be your own examiner.
-          Take any past paper and solve it as a mock exam.
-          Solve past paper in the time allocated in exam. Think you are in exam hall and solve the paper accordingly.
-          Check your paper and give yourself marks.
-          See how are you performing in mock exam and be sincere to yourself.
6.       Time your paper
- Here is technique to time your paper: Take total marks and total time. Subtract 10 minutes from the total minutes. Divide the remainder with the marks and you get time per marks
- example: If there are 100 marks for a paper and you have 180 minutes. Subtract 10 minutes. This means you have 170 minutes altogether or 1.7 minutes per mark.
- make sure that you don’t spend more that 1.7 minutes per mark e.g. if a question is of 10 marks, maximum time you should spend should be 17 minutes.
- It happens that students try to focus on one particular question and if they are unable to solve it, they get confused. Don’t panic. Start next question. If student has time, he / she can take up that particular question later on.
- Try to allocate 10 minutes at the end of exam to review the paper thoroughly.
7.       Don’t annoy examiner
See for spelling errors and writing style. Writing needs to be legible and understandable. As a teacher to many students, I have noticed that spelling errors and the way students write, at times, is not understandable. Examiner has very less time to check paper. If your paper is examiner friendly, you are going to attract good marks.

Power is not a dirty word...

Why is it that most managers shy away from the “power” word? This appears especially true in a society where attitudes of entitlement prevail and empowerment is a popular leadership notion. The word “power” brings to mind a politician, Mafioso, or cold-hearted businessmen. Yet a dictionary definition of power is the “ability to act or produce an effect”. It turns out that power, when applied appropriately, is exactly what it takes to promote action and make transformation happen. .. . . . . . .

Read the full article at
http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=275744024&gid=2970066&type=member&item=41886698&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fbit%2Ely%2FgJ1m3X&urlhash=sFVF&goback=%2Enmp_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1%2Egde_2970066_member_41886698

Top 10 Trainer's Tips for PMs Giving Presentations

The ability to give persuasive presentations is critical for PMs, and can mean the difference between getting your stakeholders with you or against you.  Yet a lot of PMs make very common presenter’s mistakes which can easily be avoided by using secrets of success known to many professional trainers.

http://www.pmforum.org/library/tips/2010/PDFs/dec/Advisory-FURMAN.pdf

3 ways to handle frustration!

At times we are frustrated when things don’t go our way. At times when people around us don’t behave in the way we wanted them to behave.At times when desired results are not achieved, we are frustrated!
Now the question: How can we handle our frustration, particularly when people don’t perform in the way we have expected them to perform.
Below, I am sharing experience from practical life. You are more than welcome to share your thoughts on this blog:
1. When all else fails……
It is said that: When all fails, lower your expectations!
Why frustration?
Because we expect certain person to behave in certain way or we expect a situation to turn in certain way. When that thing does not happen in that particular way, we are not happy.
So, why not lower our expectations? Think over this. Don’t expect perfection from any one. If we expect that people are not rational, kind or considerate and when they perform good deeds or do acts of kindness, we will be happy as we have not expected them to perform well….. Interesting isn’t it?
2. Try to understand things from other people’s perspective
This is easier said than done.
Question: How can we understand other people?
Answer: When we put them in their shoes.
What if we go to an eye doctor and we know that we are going to get eye glasses and the doctor gives us his own glasses to wear. The doctor says: I don’t know which type of glasses you need but I am wearing these from last twenty years and they must be helpful to you. So, use them.
I am sure doctor’s glasses won’t work for you or me or any one of us. Doctor has to understand the issue first from our perspective before suggesting any remedy. Therefore, if we understand other people, we might not be extra frustrated.
3. Start some physical work / exercise / game
It happened when one of our senior colleague in  accountancy exam was unable to pass for sixth time. You can’t image his frustration!
So, another senior who was taking attempt for tenth time told him: Take a squash ball and write ‘examination board’ on it and start playing squash. Hit the ball several time and let your anger out.
Third method: start playing some game or do exercise or jog. This helps!

7 big time wasters – are we managing our time effectively?

Just ask some one: Do you have time?
Most common answer: I am too busy. Sorry I don’t have time!
Every one has 24 hours in a day. No one has a minute more or a minute less. However, look around: We will find some people achieve much more in same 24 hours. Why is it so? During our daily routine, we also set our priorities to complete XYZ tasks but at the end of the day, we find ourselves still working on our initial ‘to do’ list, though we had a very busy day!
Why at times we are very busy but we achieve very less? Are we ‘wasting’ our time without realizing it?
Here are seven big time wasters and a few tips on managing time effectively. Let’s see if we are wasting time because of any one of them:
1. Telephone interruptions:
Is it really necessary to take all calls when a phone is ringing? Can we call the person back once we are done with the task on hand? In my view, it happens that once mobile phone rings, we talk and our attention diverts. The task on hand remains there while we enjoy our chat.
2. Inability to say ‘No’
We find it really difficult to say NO at times. At times, we don’t know how to refuse. However, we have a right to say NO and then suggest alternatives. If we have a list of agreed upon priorities, we can show it to the person who is asking us to do some thing which demands more time.
3. Lack of self- discipline
Do we have our objectives in writing? Are we following our goals? If we can set ‘key result areas’ and focus to achieve those areas, our efforts will pay off. If we try to handle one task only once, we will have more time. Try this!
4. Management by crisis
If we don’t ‘anticipate’ problems in advance, we will be managing by crisis. This is also called ‘fire fighting’ in management terms. It is said: Expect the unexpected and plan accordingly!. If we try to plan for unexpected, we will be in a position to manage crisis fast and effectively. We can ignore the problems which can be ignored or we can delegate issues to others before we put our hands to them. It should be recognized that it is more important to prevent ‘new fires’ from developing.
5. Ineffective delegation
At times, we want to do ‘everything’ ourselves. At times, we feel more comfortable in ‘doing’ rather than ‘managing’. If we relax and avoid ‘perfectionism’ in every thing we are doing, we can get lot of things done through other people.
6. Lots of paper work
Technology has made life easy. Is this true? or has technology made life difficult? We have lots of emails to respond to, lots of papers to be filed and lots of information to be taken care of then ever before. If we read an email or a paper only once, have a ‘do it now’ rather than ‘i will read this again’, much of the things can be done faster. If we organize our filing habit, we can find our papers fast.
7. Socializing
Thanks to face book, email, twitter and blogs, we have lots of time to socialize! Socializing and networking is a good habit but not at the cost of wasting time. If we plan to obtain information on a systematic basis and try to control our urge to log on to face book five or six times a day, we can focus on tasks on hand and do them better / faster.
You may identify other time wasters of your own and share your ideas. Above are from the book ‘Dare to Win’ by A.L. Malani