Starfish, Seahorse, Coral Snake

SEALA 1, DAY 8

Negotiation skills are vital to the successful leader. Jim sets the stage for a negotiation game that will test and exercise those skills. Three pairs of teams will compete with one another in a multi-round format: Star versus Fish; Sea versus Horse; and Coral versus Snake.

Coral versus Snake rapidly descend into a pattern of lose-lose bids against one another. But unbeknownst to them, so does everybody else.

Anthony leads a discussion how to reverse the nose-dive.

Sea versus Horse. Vickie acts as runner, communicating the rival team's bids.

Gloria plays the same role for the other side.

Bill coordinates the scores at the Central Intelligence Gathering Station. SEALA Board Member Ashok Mittal (left) looks on.

Down....

down....

down....

down.

Time for some face-to-face meetings to stop the rot. Each team dispatches its representatives to parley with their rivals in the corridor.

Star versus Fish chart out a common endgame, using a coin toss to determine the eventual division of the money pot between the winning and losing teams.

Sea versus Horse amicably agree to split the winnings at the end of the day and go out to dinner together. (But what restaurant and what kind of food to eat – still to be negotiated.)

Coral versus Snake similarly predetermine which team will emerge victorious and how the loser will be compensated, assuming trust and good faith are maintained.

Well played, all!

Capstone Project: "Cover Story SEALA." The year is 2019, and a major magazine is featuring SEALA on its cover. How might the seeds planted at SEALA 1 blossom into achievements that could capture the attention of a global publication?

The first group extrapolated from the intraregional people-to-people connections that SEALA fosters, building confidence and trust across borders and eliminating stereotypes.

Indian Prime Minister Navnath Tarle (SEALA 1) signs the 2019 "No War Pact" with his Pakistani counterpart.

The second group celebrated the award of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize to SEALA members who had leveraged the network to create GEM (Girls' Education Movement) to educate millions of girls across nine South and Southeast Asian countries.

Television host Piers Morgan, making a guest appearance from Pakistan, introduced and interviewed the laureates.

The third group focused on SEALA's ability to combine ideas and best practices from different professional sectors, and creatively targeting them in unprecedented ways at needed projects across the region.

By 2019, SEALA has mobilized the resources to catalyze the formation of schools and rural health care establishements, to inspire women's empowerment schemes, to restore historical monuments and protect important ecological niches.

The fourth group recognized SEALA to be promoting a breakthrough business concept, so radically fruitful that by 2019 it had informed new thinking about economic development, interdisciplinary learning, network design and ecosystems in learned journals ranging from Harvard Business Review to the Journal of Applied Mathematics.

They also coined SEALA's most memorable tagline, based on the function of nebulae in the universe: "formations of gas, dust, and other materials 'clump' together to form larger masses, which attract further matter, and eventually will become massive enough to form stars." Thus they are "pillars of creation" and, like SEALA, a nebula is a Nursery of Stars.

The fifth group indentified SEALA's potential as a Sustainable Education And Life Access program.

 

Bringing together SEALA's resources, like-minded people and a shared noble cause, the program has helped to encourage and educate over one million girls by 2019, working to the credo, "If you educate a man you educate an individual. If you educate a woman you educate a nation."


Evening roundtable sessions:

Parth Amin (CEO, SLK software) is Chairman of the SEALA Board. He shares his experiences in entrepreneurial start-ups.

SEALA Board Member from Pakistan, Saad Amanullah Khan (CEO, Gilette Pakistan) has also joined us in Chennai today.

Sayeed Cassim (Owner, Cassim Unlimited) addresses the topic of learning from one's mistakes and setbacks.

Another beautiful SEALA day has come to an end.

Widget World

SEALA 1, DAY 7

Strategy Deployment – Rapid Execution with Certainty. Why do so few companies execute their strategies successfully? Because real-world forces are always at odds with ideally formulated plans. Nevertheless, as Anand explains, there exist deceptively simple, proven tools and measures that organizations can use to deploy their strategies with speed and certainty.

"Rapid Execution with Certainty" rings a bell with Shamama, who is a woman who likes to get things done. But wait till she discovers what this afternoon holds in store for her.

The X-Matrix is one tool to improve success in execution. Thushan's constructive mind combines the X-Matrix with yesterday's Y-Strategy template to propose a new synthesis: the XY model. It's so complex that it requires two hands to explain.

Over the coffee break, John King gears up for his talk on "Cool World/ Solid World." As in a jazz ensemble, any group of collaborators needs a mix of talent: cool innovators working in tandem with solid operators. SEALA jazz smoothies Ashutosh, Navnath and Anil get ready to swing.

Cool World or Solid World? Solid World or Cool World? Not always easy to decide. 

Specially when you're a natural soloist like Tasneem.

"Man! What if I'm dead cool and awesomely solid at the same time? What am I supposed to do – tear myself in two?"

Tanu and Steven chilling over coffee. They're not hung up on what they're supposed to do. They don't "do" cool. They simply are cool.

Priscillia chilling in the ballroom. She doesn't "do" cold. She simply is cold. 

The air conditioning in the meeting rooms turns SEALA "Cool World" into "Cold World."

Widget World: The truth is out. Anand announces that all participants, by joining SEALA, have unwittingly sold themselves into indentured servitude. They will now be put to work in a miserably inefficient factory making widgets. Widgets come in two varieties: standard and deluxe.

SEALA workers sign up for their factory jobs, first come first serve. Shamama maneuvers to the head of the line.

Stop pushing in the back!

Despite choosing first, Shamama has managed to land the worst job on the factory floor, responsible for running between the stations, blamed for all delays and bottlenecks:

 The sawing department would like to know how it is expected to saw without any supplies.

The press department is under-utilized and bored.

The supplier would be delighted to supply, but nobody sends him any orders.

Final Assembly is dissatisfied because, for most of the time, there's nothing to assemble.

Company accountant and time-keeper Adeel reports that the factory took over eight days to make a widget.

Faster, faster!

Time for a complete re-think. Processes and information flow need to be improved. Non-value-added steps need to be reduced...

... Lean Sigma ideas need to be leveraged. Principles of operational excellence need to be implemented!

"Never give up! There is always a better way!"

SEALA = mc (squared)

SEALA 1, DAY 6

John King's morning session is devoted to understanding organizational culture. The web of relationships that make up an organization needs to be internally supportive and stable. Dyad relationships can see-saw (John illustrates with a pencil); triads with three anchor points are stable. The mathematically-minded engineers in the room are thrilled that John speaks their language.

John shifts to the universally understood language of human hierarchies, attitudes and jealousies to describe how people can range themselves into mutually antipathetic tribes within an organization.

Mike's life sucks. Who cares if Mike's life sucks? Certainly not Thushan. Thushan thinks that we're great.

Shamama doesn't care that Mike's life sucks, either. Shamama thinks she's great. And in all honestly, who can say that she's wrong?

Creating a strategy that makes a difference: Jim presents a model that focuses on matching an organization's internal capacities and its external environment.

John follows up in the afternoon with the Y-Strategy Model as a highly effective tool to develop and share one's personal strategy.

Ashutosh employs an extremely powerful, proven strategy for inspiring and delighting everybody who meets him: Being himself.

The P-Strategy Model (also known as being Prashanth) is an equally impressive instrument to light up the whole room, but so specialized that there is only one person who can apply it.

Nothing escapes the watchful eye of  SEALA Program Manager Amy Kam.

We are honored to welcome Dato' Azmi Mohd Ali, SEALA Board member for Malaysia, who is visiting to experience and support the program.

Small Group Discussions:

Andrea moderates a conversation on "The Leading Edge: Staying There." Sounds good to Rabian.

Gloria and Jim talk about "Building Your Brand: Your Image in the Marketplace."

It is perhaps significant that "Becoming an Entrepreneur: Starting and Growing a Business" attracts the largest audience of SEALA participants this evening.

Tanveer Patel (Co-Founder, President and CEO, Concert Care) drives the discussion. Alok looks on.

Facilitator Aisuluu Bedelbaeva ponders her future business empire.