Month: September 2007
Taxi shortage and Passenger Sense!
I think it is time to present the problem of lack of taxis in Abu Dhabi and the lack of sense among road users while waiting for or boarding a taxi.
Most of the schools opened yesterday and people are back from their summer holidays, the scene in Abu Dhabi street is worth watching. At each of the taxi stands, I could see at least 15 to 20 passengers waiting. With no sign of taxis around, it was like a game of musical chairs, where each of the passengers was trying to stand in front of the other, and hoping to hop into the first arriving taxi. The one who was speedier and faster managed to get in, as and when a taxi arrived.
The situation remains the same today also. There are several people waiting on the road. Some may be for more than 15 to 20 minutes. A look at any taxi stops, you will find several men and women on their way to office waiting for taxis and the expressions on their face, reminds of a goalkeeper waiting for a penalty shoot, or a rugby/football player getting ready for a home run.
The question is, where have all the taxis gone in the morning? It is time to introduce more taxis or replace the cancelled taxis with new Taxi Services. Alternatively, it would be helpful if the public transport systems are strengthened, by starting a chain service or a circular service connecting all the major streets of Abu Dhabi (ie, Hamdan street, Khalifa street, Electra street, Salam street, Passport Road, Airport Road etc) in the morning, during lunch hours, and in the evening.
A general awareness campaign should also be initiated to educate or remind the general public who regularly uses taxi service to form a Q while waiting for the taxi. I sincerely hope to see a favorable response and wish to see the vehicle less Abu Dhabi work force going to office with a smile and bring more productivity to their offices and to this beautiful country.
While I admit that the traffic problems of Abu Dhabi when compared to those in Dubai and Sharjah is very minor, this requires immediate attention as it can be solved very easily – 1st by placing a Q system and barriers in the Taxi waiting area and 2nd by introducing a Circular Bus route in the Abu Dhabi with more bus frequencies.
Hope, a small spark of thought I ignited and aided with the wind of Khaleej Times, will spread a wild fire of thoughts and schemes within the planning structure of the relevant authorities and also among the taxi users to self discipline themselves to wait till the earlier passenger who arrived before him to board the taxi.
I hope through my columns, my readers add value to these words by supporting this initiative through their own methods.
Ramesh Menon
03092007
The Practical Side of Leadership
Leadership as you see it:
Leadership, at the end of the day, boils down to taking the right decision at the right time. A leader needs to set the direction, get buy-in from the team, and then align the company to achieve the goals. Helping set the balance between short-term and long-term goals, between achieving day-to-day numbers and teamwork is also important.
In addition to leading the team, it is important to have skills in change management, have a more participative style of management and being able to build relationships at all levels. You have short-term and long-term relationships; you have strategic and operational relationships. A leader should be able to identify and manage each one of them. I learnt how to juggle between short-term and long-term relationships, between managing our growth goals, and also investing in long-term and high impact projects like Shiksha for school education and Bhasha for enabling technology in major local languages. One needs to have leadership at various levels — operational and strategic. Operational leadership is about here and now. It is about producing short-term results that are visible. Strategic leadership is broader and is more at a change level. An organisation requires both of these.
Leadership in the US and India:
In my experience, I have noticed US companies focusing a lot more on the excellence of their middle management. Middle management is the layer that ensures operational excellence — the visible results that we were talking about. The top management formulates the vision, sets the direction with clear goals, and helps drive change. Mid-management operationalises the vision and makes the changes a practical reality. People at this level tend to have been in the company for a long time compared to junior management, who are relatively new, and hence the mid-managers tend to get taken for granted. They can get jaded and demotivated easily. It is very important that any organisation focus on them and make them effective.
Another observation I have made is that, in India, we don’t tend to differentiate between types of leaders themselves. Most of the time we rely on people who have already done well in large organisations to drive incubations or start-ups. But this will not always work. Running and producing results in an already established company is a different ball game compared to starting up a new entity or division. One needs the right type of people for the right type of job. The right type of leader can determine the difference between success and failure.
Leadership style:
I demand excellence, I demand stretch results. I am very involved with my team, whether it is a three member team or a 300-member team.
How do you demand excellence? There are two ways. Giving the team highly challenging assignments and goals is one way. Another way is to take a small number of good people and give them really crazy assignments. Give them a very tough and nasty job. There is a risk in the second method that I will lose some of them in the process. But I will definitely get to stretch and derive excellence from the rest. This produces great leaders. Both approaches work well.
I have a high amount of humility, focus on team building and focus a lot on communicating and reaching out to all levels in the organisation.
The excitement of being a leader:
The fulfilment and satisfaction derived from the hard work, the frustrations and the challenges, the success and, eventually, seeing your team and institution grow and create a broad impact, is tremendous. Being a leader in tough, challenging situations brings out the best in me. You give me a choice of assignments and I will gravitate towards the one in which I will learn the most, usually the toughest. This definitely brings many challenges. But I, for one, would rather die trying than not try to make the impossible possible. I will do things that I have not done before. I will go to places where I have not gone before. You give me the charge of a $1 billion company and ask me to grow it to $1.5 billion in the next 5 years. No doubt it has its own challenges, but I will not find that as exciting, as the things are mostly in place. But give me a company with lots of problems — operational, cultural, strategic — I will take it; for the learning, for the challenges.
Development of a vision:
When the company (Microsoft) decided to back me up for Project Shiksha in 2002, we were struggling as to what to do in the educational field. Some team members from Redmond were conducting focus groups to understand the needs better. As I went through the results, I realised there was a big gap in what was required in India and what was being done. That helped me formulate our vision for Shiksha — seeing a better future for India and then betting on it. The idea for Project Bhasha came up while Bill Gates was visiting India for the first time in 1997. We were passionate about a software localisation programme. People were really apprehensive about making software in Hindi. But Bill Gates could see our vision and, according to him, Microsoft is not here in India to serve just the creamy 2-3 per cent. We need to be broadbased and reach out to more people. Once that was agreed, I wanted to do all languages — 14 of them. I tried selling it to the headquarters and they thought I was crazy. But at the same time they saw the passion and agreed. So, vision is really about seeing the shape of the future and betting on it. It is also about keeping your ear close to the ground and watching out for early trends.
Handling the change agents of technology and leadership:
I love technology. I use technology as a great tool to help me lead from anywhere, anytime and at all levels, help me respond rapidly to our customers, partners and my team.
I am very adaptable and a quick learner. Throw me into a new environment and I learn quickly and ramp up fast. I am also highly optimistic and can see the positive opportunities in most situations. These qualities help a long way when dealing with change.
Author: Rajiv Kaul (for Business World)
Rajiv Kaul became the managing director of Microsoft India when he was just 31, at an age when most of his peers were in middle management positions. At Microsoft he saw the dot com boom and the subsequent bust. He also conceptualised and implemented projects like Shiksha and Bhasha, which continue to have a high impact on Microsoft’s future. In his last assignment at Microsoft, Rajiv was at the software giant’s Redmond headquarters leading the emerging markets group. Currently Rajiv is excited about his new move, as a partner in Actis, a leading private equity investor in emerging markets. Rajiv looks forward to using his skills and knowledge in each of the regions that Actis operates.
It’s sillier to upset yourself by yourself
It’s sillier to upset yourself by yourself
1 Sep, 2007, 0019 hrs IST,Vithal C Nadkarni , TNN
There is someone who knows and understands your every thought and feeling,” says an SMS doing the rounds of mobile networks.
“This is someone who understands your pleasures and pain, the joys and the sorrow, who perceives your deepest needs and longings of your heart.” No prizes for guessing who this can be: It’s you and you alone who’s privy to all your thoughts and innermost feelings. Remember that the next time you feel overwhelmed in the essentially lonely battle of life. For no matter how much you care and however much you try to reach out to those whom you love (or even hate) across your somatic barrier, you and your inner ‘skull cinema’ remain strictly out of bounds to the world.
No matter what psychics tell you, no one else can get in there. ‘You’ as a self-conscious voice trapped inside your skull-tower are born alone and die alone. That doesn’t mean you’re destined to feel desperately lonely and unhappy. Being alone inside ourselves is the reality we share with everyone else. Existentially, we are all in the same soup: but the key to your deliverance from self-perceived alienation lies in your hands.
This was something the Greek philosopher Epictetus pointed out two thousand years ago from a different angle: you do have the power to change and control yourself to a remarkable extent. What you don’t have is similar power to control the behaviour of others (we aren’t talking about fatwas or political diktats). “No matter how wisely you may counsel people, they remain independent entities and may — and indeed have the right as individuals — to ignore you completely,” says the late Albert Ellis, founder of Rational emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT), in Accepting Reality.
“If, therefore, you get unduly aroused over the way others act, instead of paying closer attention to how you respond to their actions, you upset yourself over an event that is beyond your control. This seems akin to tearing your hair because a jockey, a prizefighter, or actor does not perform the way you would like. Very silly business indeed!”
Conversely, it’s sillier to upset yourself by yourself, since you do have control in the way you behave and the things you do. Thus, says Dr Ellis, by the proper cultivation of your emotional garden, the most harrowing things that happen will not perturb you too much. As the Bhagvad Gita says, Atmevah atmano bandhu (you alone are your own brother).
Waste not, want not
Waste not, want not
Gulf News/Published: September 01, 2007, 23:35
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. The call to the public made by municipalities and others concerned with refuse disposal. But it is no longer such bodies alone, as environmentalists are now keen to see an end to the profligate wastage that occurs, more often than not resulting in harming the environment. This is especially true when it comes to disposing of electronic consumer durables like computers, mobile phones and similar such products.
Many modern-day electronic items contain chemicals that are difficult, if not harmful to dispose of, unless by professionals who are aware of the correct procedure. This is why there are an increasing number of locations where proper discard of unwanted items can take place. The Dubai Municipality has set up areas where old computer terminals and monitors can be dropped off, for recycling by their experts, if possible, and reuse, most often by some needy charity. There are also facilities in Dubai where mobile phones can be similarly discarded, knowing that in their disposal they will cause least harm to the environment.
All it needs now is for members of the public to get into the habit of using these facilities, rather than finding excuses why they should not.
You are destined to have free will!
People spend more time arguing about whether they are driven by destiny or acting out of freewill than doing what they should do. They forget that they waste their time of their own accord, their own sweet free will!
There is no such thing as future. Future does not exist till you create it in your present moment, here and now. We all waste our time regretting or savouring what happened in the past and speculating about what would like in the future. Neither is of any productive value. There is nothing we can do about the past, it is gone; it is history.
There is nothing that you can do thinking about the future; you have to act now to make your future. Your future is in your hands, and your hands only. Trying to fashion your future based on past experiences is like driving car looking at the rear view mirror. All you will meet is disaster!
We are comfortable being told that we are destined to do certain things. We are relieved when we learn that our sins and problems are because of our past karma, because then we can disown responsibility.
Be very clear, there is no such thing as karma, the way you understand it. Your unfulfilled desires shape your actions and this is karma. As of now your future is driven by your fantasies, your unfulfilled desires, and what you do not have. When the product arrives, you ask, who ordered this, not I!
Start being comfortable with what you have. Enjoy what you have acquired instead of hankering after what you do not have. Spirituality is not about renouncing in the sense of what you understand. There is nothing that you have now that you need to renounce. Nothing at all. Just renounce what you do not have, your fantasies. You will see your life change in front of your eyes.
When you focus on enjoying what you have now, you will have to focus on the present instead of wasting time speculating and regretting. Your entire mindset will be on action. Because this action is not tinged with regret and speculation, you will automatically fall into what Krishna refers to in the Bhagwad Gita as the action without expectation.
When you learn to stay in the present, your freewill destines you to be a true Yogi, one who is truly uniting material and spiritual life. You will be in eternal bliss.
O God, I’m so sorry
O God, I’m so sorry
K. Khuptongs / HINDUSTAN TIMES New Delhi, August 31, 2007
This year could be my luckiest year, passing out from university and enlarging my circle of friends like never before.
But this week I have committed such a big blunder unknowingly that I have to share my feelings with you in Inner Voice.
It is amazing how life exists outside education.
Recently, I happened to meet my childhood friend after ten years. From that day on we rebuilt our friendship steadily. We went out and enjoyed ourselves, we chatted and gossiped about our past school life.
I came to know that both her parents had passed away three years ago, which really touched me. Though such a sad thing had happened to her, she was still trying hard not to give in, giving all her effort to smile and enjoy life.
She promised me a gift from home for Raksha Bandhan day. I restlessly waited three days for the D-day. But I was surprised on Tuesday by her reaction. I argued about this and that most of the time but there was no sign of argument on her side. Instead she said she would treat me to dinner, overlooking my inability to treat.
So we had a heavenly dinner outside, really filled our stomachs and got back each to our place. I called her to thank her for the dinner. But she sounded a bit different on the phone, as if she was weeping. It was only then that she told me that it was her mom’s death anniversary.
O GOD. Had I known earlier, I would have reacted to show my care instead of joking and arguing. She really did try to act strong but obviously needed some friendly company, which is why she asked me to have dinner with her.
God, I am really sorry. I did not know. How could I know? How does one guess these things? I wish I had been nice to my friend when she was missing her mother. Please help me be kind always, for who knows what pain someone is hiding?
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