Information – Positive Thinking
Think +ve
Father : “I want you to marry a girl of my choice”
Son : “I will choose my own bride!”
Father : “But the girl is Bill Gates’s daughter.”
Son : “Well, in that case…ok”
Next – Father approaches Bill Gates.
Father : “I have a husband for your daughter.”
Bill Gates : “But my daughter is too young to marry!”
Father : “But this young man is a vice-president of the World Bank.”
Bill Gates : “Ah, in that case…ok”
Finally Father goes to see the president of the World Bank.
Father : “I have a young man to be recommended as a vice-president.”
President : “But I already have more vice- presidents than I need!”
Father : “But this young man is Bill Gates’s son-in-law.”
President : “Ah, in that case…ok”
This is how business is done!!
Moral: Even If you have nothing,You can get Anything. But your attitude should be positive
Think +++++++ve
‘Aussies always strive for perfection"
Former Australian coach John Buchanan, who joined the world champion team in 1999 with an “error-free” mantra, said the players were still to play a flawless game but were motivated to pursue pefection.
Buchanan said the Australians may not have a perfect game but they have a perfect team, which was always motivated to improve itself despite a number of records to their name.
“We haven’t played the perfect game (yet). But we do have the perfect team, one that constantly tries to improve itself, individually and collectively,” Buchanan said.
He said Australia’s pile of spoils grew but motivation never waned. “If it had, it might have meant we had the wrong players, if they needed some form of reward, punishment, external incentive,” he said.
“It hasn’t been about motivation. It’s been about creating an environment for a group of players who want to improve themselves all the time.
“We’ve never compared ourselves to our opposition. We would look at our opposition as preparation. But our comparison was always with ourselves. That’s one of the key reasons the Australian team is different,” he was quoted as saying by The Age.
Coaching an already world champion side was not a easy ask but Buchanan believed there was always room for improvement.
Ponting reveals Aussie success mantra
The secret of Australia’s continued success on the cricket field lay in the fact that the players treated themselves as the second best team in the world, captain Ricky Ponting said on Thursday.
When preparing for a match or a tournament, the team considered itself the number two team, which needed to get better, Ponting said.
According to the two-time World Cup winning skipper, “We must never be happy with what we have achieved and try as hard as anybody else.”
The Australian team did not set itself any targets when it went out on the field as they did not want to put any restrictions on themselves regarding the total.
“We never restrict ourselves because when you put restrictions on yourself, you cannot achieve great things,” the Tasmanian said.
The trials and tribulations in Indian cricket did not escape Ponting’s attention.
“I don’t really know….India is playing under a lot of mental pressure. We must learn how to cope with it.”
The respect Ponting had for Sachin Tendulkar also came through, as the Mumbai batsman was described as one of the all-time greats.
“He is the best batsman I have seen and I am trying to be as good as him.”
Ponting was speaking at a function announcing a scheme through which every run that he will score in one-day internationals throughout the year will help get underprivileged children to school.
Twelve Steps to Raise Your Self Esteem
DETERMINATION
Mentoring The Mentors
Mentoring The Mentors
Recent research by geneticists in the University of Chicago has thrown up the surprising finding that the human brain was evolving as recently as 5,800 years ago. This was well after the rise of the modern man 200,000 years ago. More importantly, the finding points out that our brains may still be evolving.
A lot of it is linked to the way our lives have changed fundamentally in the intervening millennia. When art, music and tool-making were emerging 37,000 years ago, our brains responded significantly to this change. The development of written language, the spread of agriculture and development of cities kicked in another important change-and another phase of evolution of the human brain.
With changes in patterns of everyday existence, our brains too evolved to accommodate these complexities. The evolution of our brains has also transformed the way humans deal with one another and develop a new set of leadership skills in each era of history.
In the case of the brain, luckily for us, the change occurs on its own. But for leaders, the onus of change is thrust on them. So, in a fast-changing corporate world, a manager must change and evolve his leadership style moves up in the hierarchy.
Mentoring, at its core, is about helping your people with advice on leading and managing in a new role. If they were not mentored at the time they moved to this role, they need it even more. They might have inadvertently picked up habits that could be holding them back from being more effective.
Have you moved to a new role recently? First, my congratulations! Now, to help you judge how well your style has evolved, here are two questions you can ask yourself:-
How many new habits have I adopted in response to the requirements of this role?
How many habits and activities have I discarded as not being relevant anymore?
Mentoring involves, first, helping leaders answer these two questions and, second, helping them through the much longer process of learning new habits and un-learning old ones.
Because management is a practice, it cannot really be taught in the classroom. At best the classroom can help us know the “What” and the “Why”. But what really matters is “How”. How to learn new habits, while also un-learning?
Also, the “How” would differ in each case-the differences being defined by the mentor and the mentee, their respective styles and temperament, the organisational culture, and the needs of the organisation.
The extremely outgoing leader will naturally have a way of mentoring that is different from another who prefers a more toned down style. Similarly, the way this leader with an outgoing personality is mentored will differ from the one who prefers a less flamboyant approach.
Cultural factors too play an important role. This was recently driven home to me quite forcefully while working with an executive team comprising members from Western Europe, South-East Asia and India. Their styles were influenced quite strongly by their respective cultural backgrounds. But more importantly, there were many common areas too. We used these commonalities in our mentoring programme to develop the foundation for achieving higher team performance.
An Acquired Skill
Though mentoring is an acquired skill (learnt only by doing), what is usually not mentioned is the fact that it involves a fairly steep learning curve. Rather than learn while naturally making mistakes, we prefer to a it as managers and leaders. But the more we make mistakes, the better we become.
Also, to clarify, mentoring is not the same as offering suggestions. At best, suggestions-for example, “always do this while talking to a vendor”, or, “never do this in a client meeting”-qualify as suggestions.
It takes time, persistent and conscious effort to become an effective mentor. But it becomes far easier to learn, while making fewer mistakes, by watching others do it first. By having role models.
“GE’s training works because of a thousand different things, most of which have nothing to do with training”, declares GE’s Chief Learning Officer Rober Corcoran. He adds that 20 per cent of leadership development is a result of mentoring, coaching and role models.
[To know more about the other 80%, see The Leadership Factory (Part I) and The Leadership Factory (Part II) ]
Leadership, and by extension, mentoring, are learnt best by a process of apprenticeship, where we first observe someone doing it, before attempting it ourselves. Carl Bass, COO of Autodesk the US $1.5 billion software company, is candid. “As an executive, you’re always being watched by employees,” he says, “and everything you say gets magnified-so you teach a lot by how you conduct yourself.”
Mentoring, often, is “taught” to the leaders in the middle-rung of the organisations first. But what gets in the way of their becoming effective mentors is the fact that they don’t have any role models to observe and learn from. A few try and muddle through. The majority simply follow the path of least resistance, and leave the learning behind in the classroom or their notepads.
On the other hand, if these skills are first learnt at the top, the senior executives then act as the role models. They then disseminate these skills to the next level of leaders. In effect, mentoring skills flow down the organisation chart. Mentoring, like leadership development, exhibits a trickle-down effect-what gets to the bottom depends on the quantity poured at the top.
It goes without saying that not all that trickles down will ever reach the base. So, the more I pour, the more reaches the last level. In any mentoring programme, mentoring the mentors is the important activity. Everything else follows naturally. And leadership styles throughout the organisation evolve much easily, like our brain does.
American leaders studying the Gita
American leaders studying the Gita
The concept of the crucible and the spark that sets off the alchemy was lucidly explained by a young man who had set his heart on conquering India. Alexander the Great, when 16 years old, told his secretary, Eumenes, “The gods put dreams in the hearts of men; dreams that are often much bigger than they are. The greatness of a man lies in that painful discrepancy between the goal he sets himself and the strength that nature granted him when he came into the world.”
This simple and profound statement points to three eternal truths about the essence of leaders. A leader has a passionately desired goal in his or her mind. A leader has the honesty and courage to admit a personal incapacity to reach that goal. Nevertheless, he strives to improve himself to obtain the goal and thus emerges as the leader we recognise.
Gandhi and Alexander, bot h great leaders , were very different persons: one a man of peace, the other a hero of war. Gandhi was a small man with a big dream. Like Alexander, he also had a goal he pursued relentlessly — though unlike Alexander’s his goal was to throw off a conqueror of India. His autobiography My Experiments with Truth recounts his lifelong efforts to find a better way to reach his goal and acquire the personal strength necessary.
We need more leaders in India in many walks of life. Our young people need appropriate role models, not all of whom may be powerful or wealthy. Moreover, any movement to develop leaders in India should hark back to some eternal truths. To become leaders, young people need opportunities to reflect deeply on the context in which they must lead and to ignite the spark within themselves. Because, to become leaders, they need much more than the style of leaders: they must care for others, have commitment to a cause, and the courage to take the first, difficult steps — the wisdom that Krishna gave to Arjun.
The skills leaders need are inseparable from the context in which they must lead. Sun Tzu will remain a good source of wisdom to win a war. But the Gita may provide better lessons for living in harmony with the world and with one’s conscience too. Therefore, in the drive to teach leadership through books and seminars, we must offer models that fit the needs of our times.
CEOs that create great wealth for their shareholders are good models for running a company. But they may not be appropriate models for many vital issues that must be addressed in the world today. Disillusioned by a spate of corporate scandals and by the macho but mindless invasion of Iraq, Americans need new role models. In India too we need leaders who win by inclusion and who secure peace and not merely win wars.
Therefore, the interest in the Gita in the US is encouraging, as well as the revival of Gandhi as a role model for Indian youth in a very enjoyable Bollywood movie, an idiom they can relate to more easily than erudite discussions of his philosophy.
MANY leadership summits that showcase powerful and wealthy leaders and popular books on leadership fail to get to the heart of leadership. Books that present lists of the common traits of leaders expect that others will become leaders by applying these lists in their lives. Such lists may describe the management systems that leaders employ to get to their goals, but not the process of combustion within: they do not explain what makes leaders emerge.
In contrast to such lists, Warren Bennis , an authority on leadership, describes the process of emergence of leaders in his book, Geeks and Geezers. He says that while leaders may come in many forms and have very different trai ts; all leaders are born in a ‘crucible’ within which, through an intense alchemy, they acquire their leadership mettle.
The concept of the crucible and the spark that sets off the alchemy was lucidly explained by a young man who had set his heart on conquering India. Alexander the Great, when 16 years old, told his secretary, Eumenes, “The gods put dreams in the hearts of men; dreams that are often much bigger than they are. The greatness of a man lies in that painful discrepancy between the goal he sets himself and the strength that nature granted him when he came into the world.”
This simple and profound statement points to three eternal truths about the essence of leaders. A leader has a passionately desired goal in his or her mind. A leader has the honesty and courage to admit a personal incapacity to reach that goal. Nevertheless, he strives to improve himself to obtain the goal and thus emerges as the leader we recognise.
Gandhi and Alexander, both great leaders , were very different persons: one a man of peace, the other a hero of war. Gandhi was a small man with a big dream. Like Alexander, he also had a goal he pursued relentlessly — though unlike Alexander’s his goal was to throw off a conqueror of India. His autobiography My Experiments with Truth recounts his lifelong efforts to find a better way to reach his goal and acquire the personal strength necessary.
We need more leaders in India in many walks of life. Our young people need appropriate role models, not all of whom may be powerful or wealthy. Moreover, any movement to develop leaders in India should hark back to some eternal truths. To become leaders, young people need opportunities to reflect deeply on the context in which they must lead and to ignite the spark within themselves. Because, to become leaders, they need much more than the style of leaders: they must care for others, have commitment to a cause, and the courage to take the first, difficult steps — the wisdom that Krishna gave to Arjun.
Keep your goals in sight
Keep your goals in sight
It was early in the morning and Guru Dronacharya had decided to test his students and look for the best archer. All the 105 students from the royal family of the Kauravas (which included the 100 sons of the blind king Dhritarashtra and 5 sons of Pandu, known as the Pandavas) were being tested on each subject that they were being taught. Today the subject was archery. The master had hung an artificial bird from the branch of a tree and before handing over the bow to the young aspirant, the Acharya would ask – my child what do you see?
Sir, I see the sky….
Go my child, it’s not yet time to hand you the bow and arrows.
This process went on, till in the end it was Arjuna’s chance. Asked what he could see, he said: “only the eye”.
Yes! The ma ster felt, the worthy aspirant has the goal set before him and should be given the instrument of attaining the goal.
It is often debated whether these events occurred or whether these were mere mental creations of a person like Vyaasa. If these events never took place, the greatness of Vyaasa lies in the fact that he could compose something which has it’s relevance till today.
A great teacher that he was, with this story, Vyaasa probably tried to emphasise upon the fact that a person with tools and without a goal or mission, is like a monkey with a razor in his hands. It is the vision and the goal that makes a person the way he or she is.
One of the famous sayings of Dr. Abdul Kalam is – dream, dream, dream… for dreams convert into thoughts and thoughts into actions.
In a way, in order to transform our inner beings, probably one of the best and most effective means is to have positive dreams. That is one of the effective ways to human resource management. Most of us do not realise that it is the scope of professional growth and emotional security that lures a man to any corporate group rather than what he or she manages to earn now. In a way if an employee is given a direction and a vision to grow, the process makes the individual grow with the institution.
Interestingly, it has been seen that most people, even if they dream big or have visions, cannot sustain them. Probably that is where the role of leadership comes in. A true leader is one who gives the scope for a team colleague to grow on one’s own, while the leader helps in sustaining the dreams of the person.
When a person can sustain his own vision without any external support, he is an exception. If we can be ruthlessly disciplined to do that, we will be able to keep our machine ticking even when the going is really tough. That is probably the key to success. And that is what takes me ahead of many other fellow beings who also aspire to reach the pinnacle.
One such real life story I came across and could drive home the picture I want to portray – can even become a continuing source of inspiration. Can we bring about this transformation in ourselves and make the world a better place to live in?
When she looked ahead, Florence Chadwick saw nothing but a solid wall of fog. Her body was numb. She had been swimming for nearly sixteen hours.
Already she was the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions. Now, at age 34, her goal was to become the first woman to swim from Catalina Island to the California coast.
On that Fourth of July morning in 1952, the sea was like an ice bath and the fog was so dense she could hardly see her support boats. Sharks cruised toward her lone figure, only to be driven away by rifle shots. Against the frigid grip of the sea, she struggled on – hour after hour – while millions watched on national television.
Alongside Florence in one of the boats, her mother and her trainer offered encouragement. They told her it wasn’t much farther. But all she could see was fog. They urged her not to quit. She never had . . . until then. With only a half mile to go, she asked to be pulled out.
Still thawing her chilled body several hours later, she told a reporter, “Look, I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen land I might have made it.” It was not fatigue or even the cold water that defeated her. It was the fog. She was unable to see her goal.
Two months later, she tried again. This time, despite the same dense fog, she swam with her faith intact and her goal clearly pictured in her mind. She knew that somewhere behind that fog was land and this time she made it! Florence Chadwick became the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel, eclipsing the men’s record by two hours!
The last days of an IIM professor
The last days of an IIM professor
Ajit Balakrishnan – 10 November 10, 2006
In that darkened room in Hyderabad, I could see that the muscular arms that once smashed a table-tennis ball at blinding speed were now skeletal. The full head of hair had now only a few strands from repeated bouts of chemotherapy. Even a slight movement on the bed made him grimace with pain.
A flurry of email among the Indian Institute of Management alumni had brought me to Hyderabad that morning. “Professor Iyer is dying with cancer,” announced one mail. “They say there is an experimental drug that could help; he has ordered it from the US but he has no money to clear it when it arrives next week.”
Ramu Iyer taught computer science at IIM Calcutta in 1969, a year when Bill Gates was eleven years old and a decade before Intel and Microsoft, the defining companies of the modern information technology era, were founded. Many of his students are multi-millionaires, board members and CEOs of world-scale companies.
“Does it pain much,” I asked and immediately felt stupid; of course it did, I could see the pain in his face. “How is your business,” he asked, pointedly ignoring my question.
We talked for the next few hours about what was going on in the technology world, his mind eager to keep up-to-date, mine trying to find an opening in the conversation when I could ask the question that the IIM alumni had deputed me to ask — could we help out with the money needed for his drug?
To ask a professor at whose knee you learned everything that you know whether he needed the money to buy a drug that might save his life is a difficult thing to do. What has failed here, you wonder. The way we have organised Indian society that its teachers live a life of penury while their students prosper? Our health care system with its medical insurance schemes that extend to very few? The callousness of the business world, which, preoccupied with growth and investment, doesn’t ever cast an eye on the fountainheads of their success: schools and colleges and teachers?
In the Indian system, an IIM professor’s salary is fixed through the Pay Commission, that gigantic exercise that happens once in 10 years, when compensation levels of five million central government employees are re-set, and 20 million others at state and municipal levels and government-owned companies and semi-autonomous bodies like the IIMs and the IITs follow using a similar formula.
It works on an apparently egalitarian principle, a 1:11 ratio for lowest-level peon to chief secretary and a system of equivalences: an IIM professor’s post is equated to other posts in fisheries, mines, customs, income tax, defence, All-India Radio, Doordarshan. Either all get a raise or nobody gets one. Except that an IIM professor needs a high-quality PhD and has unlimited job opportunities as every country in the world gears up its management schools.
The fallacy of the Pay Commission system is that it prevents market forces from working in the job market. By keeping the salaries of college professors low by equating them to a dozen different types of civil servants, it slows down talented people from staying on for PhDs and then teaching at colleges, which results in colleges like the IIMs not being able to increase their intake, which leads to artificially inflated salaries for their graduates, which causes resentment in government circles, which leads to more Pay Commission demands. . . and the cycle continues.
What prevents the Pay Commission method of compensation-setting being broken, in spite of many recommendations that it be abolished, is the vast “distributional coalition” (a term coined by the Nobel Prize-winning political economist Mancur Olson) of state sector employees, who are adamant that all of their members be included in the Pay Commission.
A distributional coalition, according to Olson, is overwhelmingly oriented to struggles over the distribution of wealth and income to its members rather than to the production of any additional output. Distributional coalitions also keep societies stagnant by preventing re-allocation of resources. By artificially equating salaries across large swathes of the economy, market forces, which direct people away from low-utility jobs to higher-utility ones, are not allowed to come into play.
The darkening afternoon reminded me that I had to catch a flight back to Bombay. I bade goodbye to my professor knowing that it was probably the last conversation that I’d have with him. His wife escorted me to the door. As we stepped out of range of Ramu’s hearing, she burst into tears: “I don’t know what to do-I am so scared .”
I did not say anything, I merely smiled sympathetically because I too was worried; for Ramu Iyer, what would happen to his wife after his time, and a system where a professor could die for want of an amount that his students get as starting salaries. And the seeming impossibility of dealing with the vast distributional coalitions that keep our country in their grip.
A few of us alumni put up the money for Ramu Iyer’s cancer drug though it did not help and Ramu Iyer died soon after. I would like to imagine that wherever he is now, he has the solace of knowing that at least his students had not forsaken him even if the giant bureaucratic system that he served for so long had no thought for him.
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