I’m thrilled to share with you this amazing story of Shiven who managed to be an effective leader in a team at a remote place in Eastern Madhya Pradesh.
Who was Shiven?
He was one of the many workers at level2 of his organization who are not MBAs. They are called the ‘Barefoot Engineers’.
They hardly get promoted beyond an ‘Assistant’ level.
On the other hand, they head a team of at least 10 community leaders.
These community leaders represent at least 50 progressive minded opinion leaders in the community.
In effect, Shiven has been the leader of 500 progressive people at the grassroots.
What work was Shiven assigned with?
In the world of buying and selling, they only are concerned to reach out to people who have disposable income.
But Shiven was assigned the responsibility to try and increase the income level of people from the level of bare survival to sustainability, and help them escape the vicious cycle of poverty.
So that they can start generating a bit of surplus income which goes on to form capital for them to invest in an additional income-generating activity.
Was Shiven the only one of his kind?
Obviously not. The organization had at least 4000 workers of his kind.
Each of them manages to increase 10-50% of the ultimate beneficiary’s income.
How was Shiven different?
But there is no generation of capital in most of the cases.
The vicious cycle of poverty keeps coming back.
What Shiven managed to do was, people under him could generate surplus every year. And they did diversify their income sources.
Shiven himself now has 3 sources of income, from the job, from the training assignments, from the tour&travel activity he is engaged in as he now owns a car, and of course by bringing in good variety of seeds at a lower rate than the market, to his people.
The success secret of Shiven
He followed my concepts of performance optimization techniques. It is about a shift in the way his habits and actions used to have.
He became more polished in his attitude without going for higher education.
The best part was the transformation he had as an entrepreneur from a mere worker who started as a volunteer of Rs. 50 a day (of 2 hours), when he used to mobilize the community people for field trainings or discussions.
I asked him to get to the next role of motivator with little more understanding of my work as well as the concepts. He applied whatever he learnt.
It was not very easy to follow a life of discipline which is easier in city life, but he did adopt many modifications and followed a new discipline.
Today he commands respect at the district level as a member of the district governing board committee which is headed by the district Collector.
He has the recognition of being a very influential leader, and trains visiting delegates from nearby districts.
Be a student of Performance Optimization
Perception, Habit, Action and attitude are the four underlying factors towards excellence and becoming a brand.
It is not the ‘Shiven’ kind who benefit, but it is applicable for everybody who works with a team; be it as an employee or as a business person or an entrepreneur.
While travelling in the metro, I overhear people being bitter about their colleagues, and they spend hours discussing about it. The bitterness within does effect the energy level, as it achieves nothing.
The same energy could be utilized in a positive manner to be happy, by changing perception; by taking the mind to constructive thinking and it does helps….
Please register here to join my webinar every Sunday at 12 PM by clicking on the following link:
Live.leadingwithsangeeta.com/sangeeta-s-webinar
We can have a one to one discussion about where you are stuck and how can get to the next level.
. Just check it out.
Note : A significant part of my experience comes from Bandhavgargh