Humane Touch: Management Touch

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Rainbows used to be the magical color palette of the nature until you found out the science behind it. The stars were mystical beauties until we realised its just a mega giant torch burning far far away from us. Many things that were wonderful and beautiful becomes mundane and uninteresting once you find out the science behind them. So is it that being ignorant is bliss? Nope! Poets, writers and painters see the same moon, same stars, rainbows, lovers everyday and still are inspired by them every day. They see the beauty in what they have and what they don’t. They are not seeking perfection from these elements; after all they are not some ill-grown manager. They are inspiring leaders who see the beauty in the positive as well as the negative. That is why, I have a simple rule "never be in awe of anyone/anything". Respect everything/anyone that will make you humble and realise how little you have achieved. However, if you are in awe you will only end up as a blind follower. Being a blind follower you are paving way to two kinds of blindness - Learning the right lesson and missing the beauty.

The frenzy around Steve Jobs is a prime example for blind following. He resigned and the whole world had to write eulogy, and rightly so, as if he died in war! This man has shaped how more than half the world does its work today, converses with others and in some cases even how it thinks. All the praises that we have showered on him is worth every word of it. But then there are two side effects to this frenzy. One, we fail to grasp the real reason why Steve was so successful. Second we fail to look into the failures of Jobs and hence lose the lessons in the loss. I am sure most of us think he is some kind of wizard who dreamed about ipad and unleashed his creativity one fine morning to capture our imagination. But truth cannot be far from it. Here are two articles that somewhat captures the enigma behind Steve's success - Article 1 and Article 2. These are way better than the "Steve is god" posts on most other sites which would sound like a pre-teen raving about Justin Beiber. Also, here is one article that points to one of Jobs', probably biggest, mistake.

If you have to appreciate the real beauty of a person then you have to understand his/her positives as well as negatives, if not appreciate them. This is the second disaster that blind following leads you into. One small mistake and you tend to trash the person who you revered moments ago. Had you not been in awe and just followed your reason, respected him as a human being then you will be able to appreciate his real beauty as well. Our fathers are prime example for this! He was our hero during our child hood and whatever he did was the best. But wicked life adds its twist and we are revealed that dad is conservative. He cannot even surf the net. In short, he is not "cool". And then like sudden brakes in an otherwise smooth travelling Volvo cruiser you feel a push and then a pull. You stop seeing him as hero and the gap widens. This is when he stops being the handsome, strong dad to a vile, destroyer of freedom, dad. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, only because the brain said so! Garner some respect for everyone and everything; understand the good and bad of everyone and everything. Beauty will reveal itself from within you!

P.S: I have committed my share of blind following as well. I am a human being and I am a huge fan of Kamal Hassan, APJ Abdul Kalam, Sachin Tendulkar, AR Rahman and Illayaraja. In my blinded state I wrote a piece in this very blog on how Sachin is a god's avatar to show how a sportsman should be. Just like how Lord Ram came into this world to show how a ruler must be. Even Lord Ram had his share of shortcomings. He was not the best of Husbands, some might argue. Sachin too slipped from being a good citizen. Not once, but twice. At least the first time can be termed as a casual mistake - When he got a Ferrari without paying customs. The second time he has committed (almost) the same mistake pertaining to taxes. Well, he has twisted the laws to suit his pocket. Read from here.

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When we were kids, we did not know anything about B+. Then slowly it was introduced to us as a blood group. Then a little later it was one of the dreaded grades. But this post is not about any of them. This is about being positive. Almost every feel good book, motivational speaker, teacher, coach, strategist, doctor, lawyer and many others preach this slogan of "B+ always; more so in the face of adversity" But most of them fail to say how! At least in India, my motherland, the answer for that question is "Have faith" or "Believe in the almighty!" Though I am a theist, I simply cannot make my mind wait for the events to turn positive when I am already distressed and am thinking am knee deep in sh!t.

The next question that pops up in our mind is what is that we need to be positive? Is it only when we are down? Or do we need to develop a positive outlook to everything around us? Be it a small incident or a slip up or even criticism. With a positive bend of mind, your life turns out to be better for you. Faced with adversity or victory does not matter when you can think through an optimistic lens. Before you close your browser tab, labeling this as a gyan post, let me move on. But only before warning you, this still could turn out to be a gyan post. But what the hell! Be positive buddy :)

I am not a management guru or any such thing. I am just a recent graduate and I think about everything that happens to me during the day before I go to sleep. This helps me organise my thoughts, schedule and most importantly analyse my behavior. One such outcome of that is about "How to be positive?" This is not a panacea and might fail in most places. But it is something and this something will help you in at least a few places. I strongly believe so and hence spending a few minutes to pen my thoughts.

When I am irritated or frustrated or feeling low or angry, I concentrate on asking the right question rather than finding the right answer. Seeking the answer before asking the right question can be a disaster in the making. So what is the right kind of question? Well, if it was just that simple and standard then I think life will be boring. So, even I don't know what is that question. But what I do know is that there is no one right question (sounds like globe or gas. Well it is :) ). In what I have discovered so far, I think it is better to avoid "How" questions and encourage more "why" questions to help being positive. Let me explain this with an example.

All of us have friends or relatives. Most of us would have fought with them time and again. When we fight, it usually is mended by other firends or by ourselves. However, in the interim period we undergo turmoil that is mood-killing to say the least. And during this period, most of us will be pondering over the "how" questions. "How can he say that to me?" "How can she do this to me?" or various other questions might pop up. The downside of such questions is that it leads us to recount the favors that we did for the other person while completely forgetting about what help they have rendered for us ["I helped him when he was financially down and this is how he repays?"]. Instead, try asking the "why" questions. "Why did he say that to me?" "Why did she do this to me?" Maybe, just maybe, you will get a few responses that might elevate the other person in your eyes. At least it will give you more than one option and a quicker healing time. "May be what I said irritated him" or "May be she did not know this will hurt me."

There might be a better example or a better way to handle such situations. If you know them or use them in your life, please let me know or spread the word for everyone to know.

26th October this year, I posted 10 commandments that Sachin Tendulkar has given to us while he was playing cricket. Almost a month later, the master himself has provided his thoughts on some of the key points that I had penned down. Enjoy this interview - Sachin on being Sachin!

Whenever you think about some part of your life there are memories attached to it. If a parent thinks about his child's schooling then probably the child's first day at school is the most impressed image. If you think about marriage, then the first time you met that special someone might be the image that will conjure up in your mind (This actually depends on the state of your marriage ;) ). If I think about cricket the first image that comes to my mind is Ajay Jadeja taking a diving catch running in from long off (or was it long on!?) in Australia (Think it was Sydney.. not sure). The next image is that of Hero Cup (1992) semi-finals where a teenager was chosen over Kapil Dev to bowl the 'make-or-break' last over! Why these images!?

Everyday in the newspaper, news channels and every medium that you can think of you will see at least one news about an individual cheating or defaulting or doing some act of crime or shame. It depresses me how men can fall so low for something as temporary as money or power. It is not that we have not done any act of crime or shame in our lives ever. We have. At least I am sure I have done it.But as leaders in their own right we expect them to take the wiser choice.Where is ethics? Here is an anecdote from my life which gave me a powerful decision making tool. It was pretty useful especially when in a dilemma :)

Real-time Branding

I read an article on hbr.org where the author talks about how social media is affecting branding. Social media, the author says, has shortened the time consumers take to share their experiences with their peers. This affects the way companies react and treat to angry/dissatisfied customers. Author sums up his post with the following points:

Most firms do not have the marketing reflexes to respond in real time. There are a number of implications for executives:

Every company must have "a brand radar system" to constantly monitor social media. The good news is that if a company commits to this notion of having a brand radar system, there are many tools to help build this surveillance capability.
Firms must get used to being "naked" to the marketplace. There is no question that all the things that happen with your customers and even within your firm may become a matter of global, public record in minutes.
Companies need a "trust bank" with their customers.

Now, there are few tools in the social media itself to know what people are discussing about. For example, Twitter has the trends thing that shows what people around the world are tweeting about. However, I have not seen any social media site or tool that helps you scan for such trends. A few marketing research companies does this for their clients. But, I think there is a need for such an application which can scan various social media and find out what the hot topic is! It should also be able to tell you region wise who is talking what. Just a thought. May be social media sites themselves might come up with a premium service for companies to find out these details or may be there already exists some service like this that I am not sure about. Eager to know what you are thinking about this.

Boundary..... Limits..... Border.... what do they mean to us? What do they mean to mankind? Well, the sane thing that anyone does to know the meaning of a word is to open the dictionary. So what does Cambridge dictionary say...? "the line that divides one country from another" or "a real or imagined line that marks the edge or limit of something". Assuming that Cambridge is a good dictionary, Let us decipher the meaning of boundaries and what they mean to mankind? There have been conflicts regarding "these" borders and boundaries since time immemorial. Most of these conflicts have been on the "real line" that Cambridge puts forward. Right from Xerxus to Alexander to Hitler, everybody wanted their line extended. Every body desired that the entire human race be under their rule and every human being follow their customs, rituals and practices. But in this entire urge to conquer the world, there was little philanthropy and more of selfish motives. There was more greed and fame associated than doing good deeds.

Today, though, the dreams of Alexander and his likes, who wanted to conquer the world has come true. But time is never predictable, is it? It gives its own twists and turns to the story of mankind. Today, almost the entire mankind wants to follow other cultures, wants to learn other languages, wants to pursue careers abroad. But there is more to this trend. In his pursuit of learning and following, man has actually made the real existing border as imaginary. The whole world has now become one small village! A part of what the conquerors of yesteryear wanted is now happening at the cost of the other part of their desire or greed. With these borders becoming increasingly imaginary, are we going to witness a war-free, terrorism-free world? Maybe, yes. That is how I envision this world to be in the distant future. Too much of terrorism that is happening now, will one day give way to love and harmony. There will be symbiotic relationship between nations, between conflicting groups. But where is the synergy that will make all this happen? There must be something that should unite this goddamned fractioned world. Again, it is the borders that will be the answer. Confused? "It is the imaginary line that marks the limit of humans and nature" that will make us unite!

Apart from having crossed the limits of green house emissions and creating a death trap for his future generation, man has crossed one more lethal boundary; that between him and his quadruped counterparts. With the land under forest decreasing at an alarming rate, he is inviting danger to his lap. Bears invading into houses in Nevada are becoming common. A leopard visiting our household in India is no more alarming. Elephants coming to our fields for an evening walk are no more a rarity. Is this taking us a long way down the memory lane when our forefathers lived with these animals in the caves? Maybe yes, only this time it is with a vengeance that our friends have invited themselves to the party. This struggle between humans and animals might just be the key that might unite us. It might look like a very small threat and hence a very small driver to unite as all, especially with all the sophisticated science we have now. But be warned my fellow sapiens... It is not only us who have developed defences with time. Animals can also develop immunity against the chemicals/science that we might want to use against them. The harder we try, the harder they will rise as well.

We are doing the same thing that Alexander and others wanted to do. Now that the boundaries have been broken, we want to conquer nature.One difference, though, is that we are doing it unconsciously. We are uniting ourselves without knowing that we are going to be united. But there is the same greed and fame associated here as well. As a result of this brutal conquest we will have to fight nature and its constituents. We, the two (legged), can unite against the four (legged) in the future and fight them. But is it worth the stand off? Can we not avoid this? "Brave men win fights, wise men avoid them". Same is the situation here. But the question to be answered and actioned is this: How should we be, brave or wise?

Humane Touch

Blind!

B+ - How Vs Why

From the Master's Mouth

10 Commandments!

The Magazine Test

Real-time Branding

BRAVE OR WISE?

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