Racing to Work: Hyper-Competition Demands Passion & Attitude

Sometimes, a regular day sticks in your memory. I still remember one typical Monday. I woke up at 3:00 AM, packed a week’s worth of clothes, kissed my wife and child, and got on the road to go to the airport. On the freeway, I saw a guy on a motorcycle, who took off with a sudden burst from the streetlight. He was faster than me, but the burst of energy was contagious. When you go to work early, there’s an extra dose of energy, especially if it’s before dawn. You are feeling great and ready to conquer the world. There is no better way to start the day.

My regular travels started when I was part of a project for a deployment in Cincinnati.  I found myself emulating a colleague Ben, who learned a lot from his military trained father.  Ben’s dad told him to maintain certain standards: dress impeccably for work; run for 30 minutes each day; and maintain an immaculate and clean shaven appearance. Ben always suggest we leave early, pickup up a good cup of coffee, and get to work by 7:00 AM.

Cincinnati is a great blue collar city. It was winter so the road was full of ice and salt. All the cars and trucks were rusted on the bottom from the salted road. We’d head to work and be the first ones in the office—and we got a ton of work done. We even sometimes got so much done that we got to leave early.

It taught me that there are two ways to live. You can go with the flow and have a decent life: a decent car, decent home, decent accomplishments, decent bank balance, decent retirement fund. It will be an average or slightly above average. You can also live a crazy life. Who knows what will come of it? You try to change the world. Sometimes you’ll fail, but sometimes you’ll succeed. You might or might not have all the stuff that comprises the decent life. In the end, though, you’ll know that you did everything you could to make a difference.

It’s an idea that was exquisitely verbalized by author Jim Collins, who writes about what makes companies great.  He said that, in the long run, life is much more fulfilling if you can create a product, solving a problem, do good, organize people to pursue big hairy audacious goals (BHAG’s). In the process, you may create a great company. Obviously, it is easier said than done.

Passion and attitude are the key ingredients in accomplishing BHAG’s. It reminds me of a story a friend told me. Each day, when he arrived at the office, he would see a guy, who came to work each day, perfectly dressed in a well-pressed suit. My friend dressed more informally, since, as a technology specialist, what he wore didn’t matter so much.  If he solved the problems that were thrown at him, he got a good performance rating.

My friend mustered by his courage and struck up a conversation with this guy in the suit, complimenting him on his style. He asked the guy about his job, asking what he did. The guy replied that he called prospects and his job is to sell the product. He further explained that when he dressed to boost his own confidence, knowing that it showed through his voice when he made his calls.  He had figured out that the prospects responded better for that extra confidence and energy. He stood out from the crowd in terms of energy and confidence, and it opened doors for him. He finished the conversation saying that “Attitude is everything.”

I learned a lot about sales from author and speaker Grant Cordone. He told a story to demonstrate his impatience to be successful. He said that he drives fast, and gets pulled over a lot. It happened so often that he asked the police officer if there was any way to get a speeding ticket pass that would allow tickets to be issued automatically, so he didn’t have to waste time waiting for the officer to issue a tick. It was slowing him down on his way to making millions, he said.

So, are you racing to work? What gets you excited? Are you inspired the BHAG’s of your organization? What do you do to instill passion and discipline in your team? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Originally published at Smartgladiator.com on Feb 28, 2018.

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Aug 2018
By Puga SankaraComments Off on Racing to Work: Hyper-Competition Demands Passion & Attitude
Author:
Puga Sankara
About:
Puga Sankara is the Founder, CEO of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. So far, Smart Gladiator LoadProof has been used to ship, receive, and scan more than 100 million boxes. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. SG LoadProof is also an Enterprise System of Record for Photos, videos and any other digital documents for your Supply Chain Network. A system of record (SOR) or source system of record (SSoR) is a data management term for an information storage system (commonly implemented on a computer system running a database management system) that is the authoritative data source for a given data element or piece of information. The need to identify systems of record can become acute in organizations where management information systems have been built by taking output data from multiple source systems, re-processing this data, and then re-presenting the result for new business use. In these cases, multiple information systems may disagree about the same piece of information. These disagreements may stem from semantic differences, differences in opinion, use of different sources, and differences in the timing of the extract, transform, and load processes that create the data they report against, or may simply be the result of bugs. The integrity and validity of any data set is open to question when there is no traceable connection to a good source, such as a known System of Record. Where the integrity of the data is vital, if there is an agreed system of record, the data element must either be linked to, or extracted directly from it. In other cases, the provenance and estimated data quality should be documented. The “system of record” approach is a good fit for environments where both: 1. there is a single authority over all data consumers, and 2. all consumers have similar needs Here, LoadProof is the System of Record for pictures and videos for all the entities in Supply chain who uses pictures and videos to track using any Supply Chain System infrastructure. 1. LoadProof provides accurate, thorough, complete, and latest information in pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply chain that is tracked. 2. LoadProof is the single authority on pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply Chain that is tracked 3. LoadProof doesn’t let any external system to copy the records being stored in it, which eliminates the data being duplicated in multiple places to preserve the data integrity and credibility. 4. LoadProof has a secured login procedure which lets only users with select level access to view the data and modify the records which helps in maintaining LoadProof is becoming the Industry Standard System for Photo & Video Docs for Supply Chain Smart Gladiator is located in ATDC - Advanced Tech Dev Center (tech Incubator) in Georgia Institute of Tech. Click for a demo - https://loadproof.com/apply Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at puga@smartgladiator.com or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com. [Read More]
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