Crucial Success Skills Forged Through My Journey
I would love to talk about certain values that I believe in and practice. Apart from the below three, I practice deeper concentration on any task that I need to accomplish.
a) Being in the moment – The simple art of listening well and being in the moment with that person. Be it team member, boss, clients, or networking at an event. If I have one minute to just say hello to someone, I will say it meaningfully, by looking in the eye and using that moment effectively. While doing feedback or appraisal sessions with my team members, what they found trust inducing is that I let them finish, listen and then respond. For me, this communication skill has worked wonders as when people know that someone has a listening ear and shares authentic feedback or guidance, people would want to work with you or connect with you. This character trait has been one of my core strengths as this trait has always helped me with my storytelling while sharing my thoughts or observations.
b) Discipline – This is something that was imbibed from my grandfather. It all started with starting my day early. I realized from early childhood that there is no shortcut to discipline and this trait till date helps me to perform optimally daily and helps me achieve my goals with clarity of thought. In fact while doing my thinking, I always ask the ‘why’ to myself.
c) Organized – this stems from my being disciplined. I start my day with making my bed, having a tall glass of water, making myself tea, reflecting on the previous day, making a to-do list bifurcated into priority 1 and priority 2 and then reading few chapters from my mini library. Also, I love keeping everything at my desk both office and home organized. It helps me to find my things easily. Being in senior leadership it is important that I start with an inside out approach and start with myself.
I would also like to add that to me the mindset of a leader must be to create more leaders rather than just followers. Also, to me, a leader is someone who knows the unknown better than anyone else, so the higher one goes, the better the view (panorama) and hence the decision making that is expected.
Crafting Creative Opportunities from Every Challenge
In one sentence, I have always raised my hand where no one else did. This helped me to practice being fearless and calm in the face of adversity. I am a firm believer that challenges are opportunities nicely gift wrapped. The wrapping paper may not be attractive but that’s where is the beauty of what action we take at those moments.
In terms of overcoming challenges, if I come to think of it, I have mostly thought of “what will be my next step after I overcome any specific challenge and how will it make a better version of myself”. So, stemming from that I am sharing what I usually think of when any challenge arises on professional front as the below three are the areas which are key pillars that I lean on to make better, which in turn helps me make incremental improvements in my own self.
Building Trust as the Unique Currency :
An example of whenever I have joined a new organization. I have always spent the first 45 days doing both structured and unstructured conversations with not only my direct reports with till the level of interns. This takes a lot of effort but is worth it. One such story is my boss in one of my earliest stint observed that I was spending the first month of my joining, spending time with my direct reports and their teams together at lunch, having combined brain storming sessions, understanding each other’s aspirations, telling them about my experiences and so on. He walked up to me one day and told me ‘Ankoor, you can save a lot of time by only speaking with your direct reports as you don’t need to be talking to their teams and juniors.’ My reply was something around ‘the results that you need me to deliver within the first year, will be delivered, just that I need you to allow me to work in my style and approach’. He understood that moment and also after few months as he now was aware of my tactic. I was attacking the root cause of any issue and for that understanding your direct reports and at least one level down (I did 2 levels down in a way that no one felt bad) was worth my effort for the larger cause and checking all boxes on client delight as well. This whole initiative is nurtured by empathy.
Encouraging Innovation :
Cohesiveness has its own importance. When the first point of building trust is a gradual success, the cohesiveness automatically improves and once this improves, people in the team start having an innovation mindset. It could even to the effect of how we can reduce the turnaround time of a particular process. There are multiple examples, however, one such example I recall is that the team understood that a process that we were following, was broken, so they quickly discussed together with their group head, came up with a better and easy solution to streamline and also ensure adherence.
Building Camaraderie & Healthy Competition :
I have observed that with point one and two in place, colleagues become driven by stimulating conversations rather than unnecessary useless talk and politics. I have actually observed our water cooler (actually coffee machine) conversations also are towards a goal and solution. So if one team sees another team doing innovative work while also getting recognized, this creates a ripple effect and there is exciting competitiveness among teams which promotes best practice sharing as well as cross team positivity. Again, the spinal cord here is empathy.
Apart from this, 2 key challenges which are also pivotal in my professional journey are :
- Moving from print to digital
- Moving from hard core Advertising Operations (backend) to Client Servicing (front end)
Most important, my wife, my daughter, few good friends, a strong network of people, my current team, the leaders and all the teams that I have worked with, my share of challenges; all these have contributed to what I am today. I am grateful, and in pursuit of being a better version of myself. While I also doing my PCC level coaching study from ICF, I intend to also help my coaches become better version of themselves.
My Impact
I prefer not talking about it much, however, in a nutshell I am always in pursuit of strengthening more vulnerable parts of certain communities, the not so privileged ones and also taking actions however small, with the hope of inspiring people. Sustainability is a big subject where we need more attention and action. So, I urge people to start somewhere and be consistent. I don’t believe in doing charity for saving tax. I believe in having conversations at all levels, including grassroot level, identify a problem, define the problem well and take an action which can create a positive impact to lives- however small the initiative may be. This I’d say is more of a mindset that keeps evolving. Apart from that, I believe in the magic of network effects and I love connecting people with one another, not only for business but to create better energy from knowing one another as human beings first.
Scaling New Heights in Personal and Professional Triumphs
I measure success by calmness of my mind and observing if I am becoming a better version of myself in my daily endeavours which also involves unlearning and going into unknown territories without the fear of faliur. As I say -- The gap between your current life and the life you want boils down to one two words – “self-awareness” and “concentration” and both are inside jobs. I measure our impact by the depth of the connections we forge, the communities we nurture, and the emotions we evoke. It's about transforming brand perception into a force for positive change, aligning our values with those of our customers and society at large. We strive to be not just a product or service provider, but a catalyst for inspiration, empowerment, and innovation. True success lies not in accolades alone, but in the enduring legacy we leave behind, shaping cultures, inspiring dreams, and leaving the world a little brighter than we found it.
The Synergy Between My Path and Recognition Values
I learnt the word "Kaizen" and the essence of it during my first corporate job, which I am grateful for. My story is more to do with how a non-MBA navigated his way through a host of challenges. Yes, I was scared and vulnerable many a times, but I went ahead and did those those things anyway. Some fell in place and some I learnt from. There have been multiple magical moments in my life on which I keep thinking that it is worth making a short film which will have my journey in 10 years bifurcations - when I was 10 years to 20 years age, then 20 to 30, 30 to 40 to reaching 50. If I observe closely, every 10 years has been worth it! It has been an amazing journey till now and I look forward to get better at getting better while also contributing positively in people’s lives. I thank you all for reading through. Means a lot to me.