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Continuos Learning for a professional

The need for continuous learning in an on-going job or career stems out of the fact that additional degrees or diplomas would stand good in job promotions. A working Executive MBA is today considered a must for those aspiring to be a VP or GM or Head of a business unit.

If you were a CEO or MD, would you hire a person who had done a similar MBA as a full time student and had experience using that knowledge to good use in a previous company or promote a team member who did an Executive MBA? Mostly the first option would be the choice. An outside candidate is expected to bring in some fresh ideas that resulted in success as compared to an insider who is constrained by organization’s operational limitations and hierarchy. It is a challenge for the insider to wriggle out of them and prove himself or herself.

An on-premise management degree is a serious business ( if done in a good university) with exposure to a no.of real time case analyses and mock decision making exercises alongwith stiff competition from peer students, make a candidate better suited for a top job than an insider.

Additional degrees or qualifications do help the insider to go up a notch or two in hierarchy but not right upto the top. Some organisations want the insiders to be made ready for a top role and gets them to be guided / trained by an experienced coach rather than hiring an outsider at high cost. It is somewhat ok to groom a person in this method to encourage inside talent,but the art of right decision making cannot be coached by an expert as he or she cannot be privy to the organisation’s ground realities and tactics. A coach at best can outline the options that lead to the right decision and it is upto the promising leader to make that call. Also the coach offers insights in management decision making process or leadership grooming based on his or her own experience ( either in the same industry or in a different industry) and that is done over a 4-6 month conversational exchange. There is no doubt this coaching exercise makes the insider open the eyes to the realms management methods and improved personal attributes.

If you intend staying in the same job, augmenting your skills is vital to keep your mind engaged with new information. But hoping that it will leap frog you in the corporate ladder of your organisation in the short time then you may have to face disappointment. If getting an additional degree helps you to land on a better job, then go for it.

What is your experience? Feel free to share your views and thoughts 😊

#management #learning #coaching

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Generation Gap

A generation gap is nothing but changes that happen in you due to external influences. Human minds become conditioned due to these influences – beliefs and behaviours.

If you are unaffected, then you, your dad, your son /daughter or your grand son / grand daughter think alike and do things that keep all happy without any expectations.

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Does strategy need to be short sighted or far sighted?

A leader always has this question to the board of directors and it varies with people, business and external environment.

Many decades back, the purpose of a business was to serve the people with a good product or service encompassing the highly valued ethical business practices and corporate governance. The vision or strategy was for a longer period of time that needed sustenance, resilience and concern for the consuming population and in general, the humanity and nature. Over the decades, as the innovations became rapid, new products and services got developed, consumption by population increased and economies grew larger, a long term strategy had to suffer in execution and sustainability of the business. Agility was the need of a business enterprise and that was slow on adoption due to slow technology adoption and execution methods.

Over the succeeding decades, a business strategy had undergone many changes and today we talk about meeting mostly the expectations of business analysts, investors and share holders. That means how to accelerate the growth of the business and maximise the profits. Obviously this has its own challenge as business leaders tend to achieve this singular objective with a strategy that is short sighted in vision and execution. There is nothing wrong in working towards maximising profits but there are methods and ways to realise it in a short term. In fact the emphasis today by many thought leaders is towards building a strategy for short term due to the demands of security, rising competitions, regulations, geo-politics and technology disruptions.

Business leaders, when adopting a short term strategy, must not look at maximising profits alone and rather focus their own energies and that of their boards towards handling the disruptive trends in macro and micro environments. They must ensure they keep the environment, sustainability of business and corporate governance ( ESG) always in sight respecting social and national and global mandates.

This short term strategy needs to be a transformational one to take on the new challenges and opportunities to drive the Next Generation and to offer immediate term benefits. It may be necessary to set a target date to achieve the objective and then work backwards to develop and execute actions in successive steps. These actions would need to be towards transforming the technologies that are in use in the business, understanding ESG mandates and creating capabilities to deliver these transformational changes. The time frame could be 6-8 years depending on the hierarchical nature and the size of the business that is being driven.

In conclusion, a business must now look at strategy in shorter intervals of time and create ( or seek) capability to execute all those actions that satisfy all the stake holders of business.

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Save your money

The twenty’s and thirty’s are the most productive periods in one’s life because what one does in this period determines his/ her success in wealth creation, a continued comfortable life and financial security.

Here are some tips that could be useful:

1. You need mobility but not in a high end car that needs that extra 5-8 lakhs which could be saved in a bond or a good stock.

2. Dining out with family and friends is fun and relaxing but spending huge money every week is a drain on your pocket. Instead use that money to buy mutual funds through SIP or invest in insurance products.

3. Branded clothes, shoes and hand bags look appealing to others’ eyes but what other benefits do they offer? A stitched or a less costly outfit also fits well on you and saves you a lot of money that can buy the most essential need of your family. A huge wardrobe may amplify your life style but frankly do we need all those dresses that are worn very rarely?

4. Costly smart phones or gadgets fulfil your esteem needs but the cost of owning them could help you to upgrade your professional skills or go on a short holiday with your loved ones. A less expensive phone does the same work.

5. Dating is good to know about your future partner, but ensure you are off if it doesn’t work out for both in a few meets. Expensive on the wallet.

6. Ensure your passion doesn’t stretch you on the dollar, unless it turns into a livelihood. Paintings, Intercontinental travels, accumulating real estates, piling up on stocks or owning a summer resort are all for the deep pocket biggies. Not for someone who waits for the pay check every month.

7. Acquiring assets on EMI is enticing but unknowingly you pay more by way of interest that otherwise could have funded other important expenses. First time buys like home, car etc is fine but second time, third time…gets you in debt trap.

8. If both husband and wife work, the double engine makes the life chugging along nicely. Extravagance lures you but during uncertain times ( like Covid times) could badly hit either of you and you need that extra savings to get on track.

9. If you are from a large family of siblings, pressure is enormous if sisters are to be married off in your income. You need all that savings to support when your parents cannot. Family is important than a flashy life style.

10. Friends may be the lifeline for many but underwriting their debts get you in deep mess when they default and you are legally mandated to pay for their loans from your income.

It’s not about tightening our waist belt. Just think about Kitty bank that we were so fond of in our childhood. Let us continue that habit !

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Move the needle for a Better Sustainable world

‘Create a Sustainable world’ has been a clarion call for many decades but the big question still remains – are we doing enough for the future generations?

In a 1987 report, Brundtland called out a sustainable development as the one that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs. We keep repeating this statement even after 35 years without doing much in this space that will hold the hope for the future.

The concepts of Sustainability and sustainable development are interlinked. UNESCO formulated a distinction between the two concepts as follows: “Sustainability is often thought of as a long-term goal (i.e. a more sustainable world), while sustainable development refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve it.

Today the sustainable development is focused on economic development, social development and environmental protection. All these three have inherently relied on technological development that has its own downside. We have seen how fossil fuels had helped the phenomenal growth of automobile industry to meet industrial, social and personal needs. But we are talking about how they gave rise to pollution and carbon emissions, a clear downside of a technological innovation. Hydrogen fuel and Electric Vehicles are ray of hope but disposing used batteries has not yet become a big worry. Paper was invented and manufactured in billions of tonnes every year only by destroying forests and eco-systems. Fortunately we see a hope of less paper being used these days as we have moved long ago into gadgets like hand phones and computers that helped to store what we see,write and read into virtual storage for us to retrieve later and enjoy. Similarly, energy from atoms was considered a huge technological break-thru until Chernobyl disaster happened. We have put that tragic incident behind to make the atomic plants more safer and also moved away towards producing energy from wind power and solar power in a big way that are not big worries for the environment. So, for every invention or innovation, the world came out with a balancing act that sustained the negative impact with a safe and improved product or method.

Sustainability and technological development are two sides of a coin and we need to keep flipping it as it is big challenge nay impossible to get both on the same side. It is a constant balancing act of innovations and sustainability that keeps environmental degradation in check. It is a huge responsibility for all of us that we make every effort to protect the human race and our environment from extinction. There needs to be more developed and developing countries in every continent and if we fulfill a part of the goals relating to poverty removal, hunger removal, clean water, better health, better education etc we have made a great start.

United Nations General Assembly has actioned on Sustainable Development Goals and has made a universal call to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere.​ There are 17 Goals ( 2015-2030) that are interconnected, apply to all countries, and need to be carried out by all stakeholders – governments, the private sector, civil society, the United Nations system and others – in a collaborative partnership.​

Sustainable Development Goals: 17 Goals to Transform our World​ | United Nations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development

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Growth is Fire

What is Growth for an individual?

It has to be multi dimensional, aspirational, purposeful, holistic and is a fire kindler.

Our growth needs to be encompassing every aspect of our life and has to be multi dimensional. Materialistic growth alone doesn’t determine our personality or who we are. It has to be seen in every sphere of our life – our support to the needy, our care and empathy to other family members and friends, our resolve to stand for the right cause, our respect to all types of people, our recognition of efforts from others in every walk of life, our adherence to the rules of the land, our endeavour to deploy right business or work ethics, our willingness to appreciate those doing good work, our devotion to dharma and above all our belief in the supreme power that operates and controls our mind and body.

Growth of an individual is the result of fulfilling the aspirations , which are again have to be for the right causes. One cannot be aspire to be a millionaire by dubious means. A politician interested in serving the society could be a noble thought but he or she should desist from amassing wealth by unethical means and use it to help the needy. That is definitely setting a wrong example. Likewise making use of your friends and well wishers to rise in a business or career and then ditching them is an act that is never considered as growth. Adhering to the rules of the land and the society that we live in, is essential for our growth.

A purposeful growth is inclusive of right path, right methods and right ends. The growth needs to be of help to others. We have many industrialists and businessmen who have grown multi-fold in terms of net worth in our midst and they have created Trusts with their own money to set-up social organisations that run hospitals, schools, charities and promotes talents.

Growth aspiration is like a fire that kindles our mind to think big, act big and achieve big. It has to be constantly lit with our relentless efforts to keep it alive. A dead fire signifies the total absence of desire and effort. Let us turn our entire focus on our holistic growth and that of people who are with us. They also need to grow, otherwise the society will not grow and flourish.

A growth that has deep, strong roots cannot be swept away by any storm or flood. It stands firm even in adversities or calamities.

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2023 & thereafter – Expectations for a better world than today

2022 has been a heart breaking year for many who are grieved and displaced due to the ongoing war. It has also been a year of remarkable turn around for many coming out of Covid impact.

Indian economy, in particular, has bounced back with a renewed optimism. But the effect of war and the general downtrend in economies of other leading nations is a big worry.

Social unrest is the biggest worry of all and it gives credence to the fact that wealth is not evenly distributed with rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. How do we set right this imbalance? You need not be a communist state to do it but the leaders of business, politicians and the governments must make all earnest efforts to correct it.

Hope in 2023 ( not withstanding a second Covid like scare) and the years after, we will work towards setting right the balance of power, inequality in economies and living conditions and most importantly prevailing social togetherness.

  • Greedy Politicians with their role of middle men take the sizeable chunk of people welfare fund that help them to buy votes. This breed of people have not changed in a democratic set-up like India and they roam around scot free with the courts and government agencies unable to penalise them.
  • Corporate leaders take home a huge pay that is many times the median salary of employees who are also a part of growth and profitability of the business. A leader should lay himself off first before doing that act to employees this saving many jobs.
  • Governments go about appeasing sections of society in the name of social
    justice and squander public money. Job generation is forgotten and dole-outs take centre stage. Good governance has become a rarity and it is difficult to differentiate between politicians and law makers.

Happy and Prosperous New Year!

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Fear Factor – Impact on an individual’s development

From our early days of childhood, most of us have developed a sort of fear about people, events, animals and above all their own self. Can I do it? Am I good at it? I can’t do better than him.

Is it a good attribute for our personality development ?

Psychologists say fear is an underlying phenomenon that had developed in our mind over the years and is the one that holds us back from giving our best. We feared so many things in our early life – school, mathematics, darkness, Sea, mountain top etc but as we grew older they disappeared. During our teenage days, we feared the stage but the more we stepped on it, the more comfortable we became. We don’t get tested if we remain in our comfort zone for long.

We have seen people in TV game shows attempting some impossible feats and only those who had overcome fear succeed in them. It gets you a sort mental attitude that is tough to break in any adverse situation.

How do we master fear by understanding it better and turning it to get us success ?

Fear can be a challenger when we don’t get bogged down and confront it with a definite purpose and focus.

Fear acts as a motivator that lets us stay with our objective and succeed. Without fear, complacency sets in and we let our guards down to fail.

Fear kindles the curiosity in things that we dare to do or probe. A curious mind looks for the next steps to reach our goal of knowing something new and exciting. We must be curious to learn what we are afraid of and work towards negating that state of mind.

Fear is a guide too, because our purpose is over shadowed by the absence of efforts and ways to work towards a solution. Fear alerts us to be cautious and bold in our decision making whenever they are needed.

Fear lets us discover our wisdom that propels us to do successful actions. It dispels the emotional feelings attached to a proposed action and objectively evaluate the consequences of that action. Our mind thinks rationally once our wisdom takes over.

Fear lets us to discover the greatness in us other than weak spots and it is a catalyst to infuse a positive mind set to use our greatness to achieve success.

Our personality is what we consciously define because nobody else has that personality and to define it for us. It is unique to us that we shape it well. Fear, and not overconfidence, helps to define our personality to take risks, be authentic, be competitive, be rational and successful.

Remember, some of us raised our hands in our class to answer a question, however stupid the answer was. That questioning mind helped to shed our inhibitions and seek answers in our lives.

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Transformations – In Individual, Organisation, Economy and Country

What is a Transformation?

Today Transformation is the buzz word but we fail to notice it has always been happening. Every value creation of a product or service is a transformation. Every individual gets transformed over the years. Every economy is is grown tapping into the energies and growths of individuals and business organisations. Every country makes attempt to develop into a formidable one with the strengths of its people and economy.

An economic transformation always involves individuals’ transformations, product transformations, service transformations and value creations that are experienced and felt by the people. It is just that today it happens in a digital era and we call them Digital
Transformations.

A self transformation adds value to an individual like learning a new art or sport, learning a new area of business or changing our attitude towards people and life. We don’t grow without transformations. Timid, introvert individuals turn most eloquent and participative. Aggressive, self centred persons turn most understanding and pragmatic.

Likewise businesses don’t grow if they don’t want to improve and transform by creating values to their businesses and its partners – employees, vendors, customers and other-stake holders. Everybody gets the value in an inclusive growth model.

Successful organisations have tremendously grown over the years and if you look at their growth records it is the values that they had created over the years that are well accepted and appreciated by their customers. Very rarely single product companies have survived in a competitive world and if they did, it is the variations on their product mix that have helped them to keep pace with the growth and volumes.

In this journey of transformation,

– an individual takes help of an agent in parents, elders and mentors.

– Organisations employ leaders to help them create values.

– Governments gets the help of both people and businesses to deliver a good governance and to improve the economy of country and its people.

Transformation is a rolling cycle wheel to keep us always moving forward. The moment it stops we are drowned by sorrows, miseries and poverty. We have seen how some countries in this last few decades have reached this state that got them into deep debts by not creating economic values. Leadership is an important tool in the time of crisis and economic turmoil. Let us identify and strengthen those leaders toward a path of progress and prosperity.

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PTO – Peeling The Onion

In a figurative speech or in a negative connotation, we have heard “peeling the onion” means dwelling deeper and deeper into a cause or an event or exposing the true characteristics of a person. It is like the ‘turning a page over’ or simply PTO that we are used to while reading a book or novel. We are keen to know what remains at the end. This is the general nature of human mind to be curious all the time to know what are the next steps and how do we move forward.

An onion gets rotten if we allow it too long in the basket. We peel it layer by layer until it is good to be cut and used. Sometime it is so rotten that we cannot even use it for any good. Humans wear multiple layers of skin as we grow old, but our basic characteristics that were formed at our cognitive years of learning and growing do not change entirely during our life time.

The skin of innocence that we wore in childhood gets shed as move into adolescence to get into another skin. This is when we form our strong likes and dislikes in worldly matters. Years pass-by, we become more matured ( rather we think we are) and start pursuing our beliefs and disbeliefs. A strong character emerges here that eventually shape up who we are and why we feel we are less important or more important than others. Just like an onion turning rotten is a slow process, these strong beliefs and disbeliefs turn dormant in our inner self and reflect our true character. We expose this character to others in our words and actions and those in turn invite positive and negative actions from them. Conflicts in views and actions often the result of conflicts in characters of people involved. Wars are fought by leaders and not by people, for the right or wrong cause. Even when people do not want a war, the society or the political set-up has given their leaders that liberty to wage a war against a cause they only believe right. This belief is precisely a reflection of the true character of leaders. Similarly, societies get into turmoils due to the action and inaction of its leaders and what we see today around us is hatred towards one another or group or a religion. We have seen many of those long standing friendships or partnerships turn sour when friends or partners start seeing the rotten left over in a peeled onion. Divorces happen, siblings disagree, neighbours quarrel, team members fight with each other, political parties accuse each other and all these because the rotten stuff is exposed.

In our ancient way of education, the relationship between a Student and a Teacher was that of a knowledge giver and a knowledge seeker. A knowledge that was imparted in such a way was never aimed at creating hatred and intolerance but at creating harmony and to live a righteous path. A teacher of those times, peeled the skin of the student layer by layer to make him feel what was good for him and why it was so.

The education system that is practiced today has mostly failed in the above aspect of a student asking what and why. It is just preparing him to memorise what is taught to him by the teacher and pass an examination. There is no attempt to make a student intuitive or creative to deploy his mental, emotional, Psychic and spiritual thinking abilities. Let us bring those elements in our methods of teaching.

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Crisis Marketing

No CEO or a Marketing director would want to experience a situation when their business gets into a deep trouble due to mounting customer complaints, product failures, legal issues or safety concerns. It is a do or die situation for them to resurrect the image of the brand or product and to resort to averting a major disaster that would question the very survival of the business.

Crisis Marketing is all about what a CEO should do before a crisis, during the crisis and after the crisis. Many businesses do not plan for such an event ( actually there is no need for a plan) but the marketing experts always advocate why averting a crisis needs to be built-in their strategy and communications to customers or stake holders. The crisis could happen in any phase of the business – start-up, growth or stabilisation.

Before a crisis

In the first place, It is the responsibility of every leader of the company to know all about their company, products, the market and the competition through awareness and attitude research.

  • A product should be positioned to the customers not by tall claims that it is the best and the biggest but by establishing the value it could offer to its customers in terms of benefits of the product or service. The customers must realise what’s in it for them to buy that product or service. Advertising or personal communication need to convey the benefits.
  • Paying attention to customer queries/ complaints and timely answering them creates the confidence about the company, its people and the product. A dissatisfied customer has the potential to create a feeling that the company doesn’t care for its customers and that negative feeling gets spread across the market to reach many customers through word of mouth, product reviews or ratings. Customer service team should listen to the voices of the consuming market, internal staff, distributors, dealers, regulators and the trade journals or media that cover the industry.
  • The sales materials, brochures, reports and newspaper clippings about the product must be used well to communicate to the customers and to keep the product or the service offering always on the top of the minds of customers because those would certainly help in the event of a crisis.
  • A problem always comes up un-announced and it is the responsibility of customer facing team to smell it through customer interactions, feedback or random checks.
  • Public relations through publications of articles and sponsoring a high profile event – a sports,cultural or art festival and seminars increase the good will of the customer and the buying groups.
  • Building trust is of utmost importance and the rhetoric claims or ads should not exceed credibility.

During a crisis

A crisis has hit the company and how well it is mitigated to reduce the impact of its aftermath consequences helps to keep the product and the business alive.

  • A single spokes-person must front end the team to represent the company’s position and to issue updates. CEO or Marketing Director or the company’s Lawyer must refrain from doing this act. The messaging is important and no flamboyance is needed by that spokesperson to clarify the stand of the company.
  • As a primary rule of crisis management, get the company’s side of the story out first to the customers and stake holders before someone does it from the media or competition. In this way, the narrative of the story is set and the tone will amplify the openness and candour.
  • Keeping a statement or a hand-out ready rather than being extempore, helps to avert confrontation with the audience. “Off the records” statements have the danger of mis-quoting or distorting by the critics.
  • In a crisis, more than a product it is the image of the company or brand that is likely to get a beating and hence all the good-will from the industry peers or forums should be used to minimise the impact of the crisis. Brief statistical data about the positive information need to be offered.
  • Employees may turn out to be the epicenter of the crisis and hence it is important that they are made aware of what is happening and how the crisis needs to be addressed and confidence of the customers restored. The ability of the business to survive the crisis depends on the employees’ commitment and support. Keeping them in the know of things that led to the crisis and management’s effort in mitigating its fall-outs would help them to continue to be loyal to the company.

After the crisis

It is business- as-usual like it was ‘before the crisis’ with all the do’s getting repeated.

  • The company is in a better position after having learnt the root causes of the crisis and putting in place all the necessary steps to build a better product, to know more about the customers and their expectations.
  • Marketing communications and advertising campaigns should reflect what the company thinks of its customers and what the customers think of the company. Honesty in what you say and do pays in the long run and it is an effective ingredient for success.

Crisis marketing requires a positive attitude to succeed when things go wrong. Cover ups of mistakes gets the company deeper into the mess and it becomes impossible to recover. We have seen businesses that are banished from the market and they are classic examples of crisis management taking a back seat with leaders looking for causes that created the crisis rather than preparing them to handle it and succeed. In a challenging business environment, it is absolutely important that one must know how to foresee crises and avoid them. If it had happened once, it should not repeat again when the lessons were well learnt.

Reference: Crisis Marketing: When bad things happen to good companies by Joe Marconi.

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Building a Brand

In a simple language, brand building is about communicating with the brand’s customers, prospects and the influencers. What is communicated with them and how it is done is the rest of branding exercise.

The internet is inundated with articles and papers on how to build and nurture a brand but an apt definition comes from the renowned marketing gurus of the world – It is a voyage of building a corporate soul and infectiously communicating it inside and outside the company to all your partners, so that your customers truly get what your brand promises.

A brand conveys an emotion, an identity, the benefits, a social message and the ability to make the audience imagine or get assured of THE PROMISE, the product or service that it represents. A brand manager or brand custodian’s sole objective is to keep the brand always in a recall mode of the audience, which is achieved by advertising about the brand’s products or services in magazines or newspapers or technical journals. It is also done through social events like sponsoring a musical concert or a sporting event. But the most important job of a Brand Manager is to ensure either the product or service that the brand represents is in no way offends the feelings of its audience in terms of usage or inference of a message that is not socially well appreciated or accepted.

A brand is considered a winner when two crucial moments of truth happen at the hands of its customer- firstly by selecting a brand among the many that offers similar products or services and secondly by using that product or service to verify the promise made by the brand about that product or service. If the promise is not fulfilled, the customer is dissatisfied and consequently the brand earns a bad name and it is a huge challenge for the marketing persons of the company to employ methods to restore its image as a performing brand. A consistently non-performing brand quickly vanishes from the market with low sales of its products or services.

In a highly globalised environment and in a hyper competitive market, a successful brand needs to constantly establish its status as a performing brand and the communications that go out from the organisation seek to re-affirm its promise and continue to keep the positive image in the minds of the customers. Brand names or logos alone do not sustain the position of the brand in the market place. It is how well the brand is oriented or the lack of its orientation tells you if the brand is a winner or not. Brands differentiate, reduce risk and complexity, and communicate the benefits and value a product or service can provide.

Both B2C and B2B companies need to build their brands for sustenance and longevity of business. It should never be taken as a sub-sect of marketing. A brand being an asset of the organisation, it is vital that the top leader conceives a holistic approach to building a brand and ensures a strategy towards executing that approach to win more customers. Brand management is a portfolio of the Chief Executive with a senior leader of his/her team focusing independently on it. This is the first step towards successfully creating a brand. It is crucial to align brand and business strategy, and it can be effectively done if the brand is monitored and championed closely by the top management of an organization. A start-up with a VC funding has a low gestation period and hence the founder or CEO needs to focus on the messaging from Day 1 to its intended customer segment and the message needs to highlight a solution to a problem and how that solution differentiates the brand from its competitors. The faster the reach of that message, the quicker is the sales graph going up.

A good brand promises the benefits, attracts more customers by constantly communicating those benefits and creates a sense of pride among its internal and external partners. Bigger corporates get valuated on their brands by 3rd party agencies and Brand valuation is an important parameter in the performance metrics of the organisation for the stock exchanges, competitor analysis and investors.

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Project Management and Digital Disruptions

Project management has been a subject of great importance and relevance in all industrial and Information Technology projects. As new technologies are getting adapted, the way the projects are run need modifications to include the methods to counter the impact of those technologies.

Digital disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Automation greatly impact the project management methodology and confining the PM techniques and best practices to a Project Management Methodology becomes a challenge to the project managers. Agile delivery framework and project governance processes also undergo significant changes in a project delivery. Data mining, predictive analysis and forecasting techniques play a role on how the project is to be delivered.

There is a prediction that by 2030, 80% of the work of today’s project management discipline will go away when AI takes on traditional project management functions such as data collection, tracking and reporting.

The addition of above mentioned project management tools will surely improve the way the projects are delivered and help the managers to understand the new Project risks, and how to mitigate them. An experienced manager learns not only from the methodology or process that he had studied but majorly through his own experience and that of others. A repository of risks of such critical projects that have interface with the emerging technology is boon to them.

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Marketing Strategy – how does it get impacted by other factors

In a competitive market, the focus for a product company is mostly on improving the sales and retain or gain market share in a specified period of time. There are factors within and outside of the company that impact the marketing strategy of a company. The leadership of a business firm attempts to build a strategy that addresses all the components of marketing – branding, communication, channels, promotion and pricing but it is not always a comprehensive approach that stays for a longer period of product life cycle.

A stand alone strategy for marketing is not sustainable or expandable unless that strategy encompasses the elements of R&D, People, Finance, Supply Chain, Information Technology and Customer feedback to deploy a holistic approach to increase the sales. Such an approach is easier to manage at a granular level and take a course correction if the desired outcome is not seen. It is the responsibility of a CEO or a Strategy Officer to put together a team of leaders managing the individual functions to evolve a strategy that has the least impact to these individual functions besides evaluating the macro environmental, economic and social factors. Some examples are:

– A higher output from the shop floor involves managing the supply chain challenges

– An increase in no of channel partners involves keeping enough quantities on the shelf at their warehouses or at retailers’ outlets.

– An additional feature on the product involves efforts of R&D function but also the redesigning the machine tools on the shop floor besides the cost impact on the final price.

-An in-depth analysis of which market segments are performing well and which are the ones lagging behind, using IT tools, helps to re-align the methods of campaign and reach the target customer segments.

– Social, Political and Economic environments have impact on how a strategy needs to be developed and executed for increased sale of the product.

– The capability of the organization is put to test in terms of its people aligning with the execution of marketing strategy. Culture of the organization, skills of its staff and the technological / manufacturing expertise.

– A product has its own life cycle but the strategy changes based on the stage of the product in that cycle. Strategy during the growth and declining stages significantly differ.

Lastly the competitive environment of the product determines the success of the product and its sales.

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Ethics in Business

We are hearing one more CxO title added in recent times by corporates – Chief Ethics Officer.

I am intrigued not by the title but by the very necessity of such a title. Why do corporates need to proclaim they have such a person and make a claim that all is fair & good in their business and in the manner they serve all their stake holders. Until that person arrives in that organisation, were the business practices not hunky dory? Why do they resort to re-iterating it? Agreed, it is to support the brand image but there have been 100’s of businesses still exist today that did not have that person but they were seen to be conducting their business, deploying ethical business practices. I don’t want to name those Indian and International brands as you know them too well.

The organisations per se, do not invent best business and ethical practices but the people, especially the leaders and employees in that organisations do. It is like a skin of an individual and those individuals collectively decide what is best for them, their customers and business / Government partners. It could be a simple safety feature in a product or not suppressing vital information to the regulators. The intention not to cheat any stakeholder is how they do their daily work.

When does an individual imbibe this ethical culture in him or her? It is as early as in his childhood, the parent, elders and teachers remind this act that gets embedded in a CEO’s mind that make him responsible to his team and customers to bring in that culture in the work place. We get shaped by what we did in our schools, what moral science teachings we read, what the parents taught and how the teachers corrected our thoughts.

A business is meant to perform in an ethical way and that culture should pervade all through the ranks. If that mind set is firmly set in, there is no need to have a watch dog like an Ethical officer to emphasize and oversee the business practices. If an organisation chooses to have one, that person is responsible only to the Board of Directors and not to a CEO or MD. Also it needs to be an independent role without any other responsibility attached to it.

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Pride & Humility

They never walk together as long as we know the difference between “who is right” and “what is right”.

No one teaches you the difference either.It is how we shape ourselves to learn the difference through our experiences and feedback from others.

It is a struggle we encounter every day. The sooner we tame it, the better for our peaceful living.

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Making time

It is never about Having time. It is always about Making time.

What is easy:

Complaining, pretending, blaming, judging, resenting, ignoring, lying, cheating, controlling, bullying.

What is hard:

Inspiring, learning, mentoring, trusting, empowering, building, connecting, growing, helping, influencing.

Hard things need focus and dedication. I keep trying….

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3 R’s of a Professional career

Retrospect, Replenish, Rejuvenate

Mid career blues is a worrying factor for many and they start feeling that their careers are not where they would like them to be. As we spend years in the profession ,we set our priorities and goals that condition our mind to shape our thoughts and actions. We become obsessed with them and sometimes fail to notice that there have been deviations in our path that had involuntarily crept in and consequently these deviations moved us away from achieving our goals.

There are individuals who had set out on their career path with certain skills or qualifications. As years passed by, they realise that these skills are not the ones that will continue to be useful to help them grow in their work place. There are enough success stories of individuals who had identified newer opportunities and grabbed them in spite of the fact that these opportunities required totally different set of skills. They acquired those new skills and repositioned them to enjoy rewarding careers. If you observe, some of those people who are successful today in Information Technology, Finance, FinTech, Retail or Asset Management are those who have switched their career from the traditional jobs like manufacturing , banking, government services or infrastructure industry.

As working professionals, we need to RETROSPECT our past and assess where we would reach to realise our goals with our current skills. A strong mind is required at this stage to move away if the present is not conducive and is not going to take us to the future that has huge potential.

REPLENISHMENT is the way of finding out what has been used up in our inventory of skills and if they could be improved to be more useful to meet the demands of industry and to reward us more in the work place. Picking up management lessons from a good school or learning a new software language or engaging a mentor to help unearth our latent talents are a few areas we could look at.

Having armed with a new inventory of skills, let us REJUVENATE our career, injecting it with thoughts that would freshen up our outlook about a renewed future. Pursuing fresh ideas keeps our minds alert and inquisitive to learn new things.

#career

#learning

#management

#jobs

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Mindfulness

The new year has started on a more cautious note than the past year with people getting infected in huge clusters all over the world. However with the fatalities on a low count it is a solace that the situation is not all that alarming.

The happenings in the last 2 years have put enormous stress and anxiety on people of all ages. Living with the pandemic, which is slowly turning into an epidemic, has taught us the benefits of keeping our mind free of what is going around us – loved ones leaving this world, friends & relatives loosing their jobs, missing good times at the work place etc.

We are fully aware of what mindfulness is all about and we have the basic intrinsic ability to know how it would help us. But only our willingness to work on it to open our minds and to be unresponsive to outside events makes us feel inner peace and tranquility. It is a tough ask but practice makes an act perfect.

Let us get into a few minutes of meditation every day and enjoy its immense contribution to our work-life balance.

#mindfulness

#worklifebalance

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Efficient & Effective Sales Organizations

Is an efficient sales organisation an effective sales organisation too?

Are they different or the same?

An efficient sales organisation has a set of predefined processes and principles that lead to faster customer acquisition or increased sales revenue. An effective sales organisation is the one that re-aligns or modifies its processes, sales channels, promotions depending on the market conditions, consumer behaviour and life-cycle stage of the product.

An efficient sales organisation is like a well oiled machine that has its own market, customer segments and channels and that sells what has been produced in bulk with a margin that is pre fixed. It is constructed as a’ push marketing ‘ organisation.

An effective sales organisation is like going on a high way but taking alternate routes if the highway is blocked or crowded and finds out new markets to push its produce. It is in-built with market intelligence on pricing, differential margins, competition, product variations and communication. It is constructed as a ‘pull marketing’ organisation.

A start-up would need to start with an effective sales organisation and move towards an efficient sales organization as the product matures and gets into a large market.

#effectivesalesorganisation
#pushmarketing
#pullmarketing
#salesstrategy

How are push and pull marketing strategies deployed and how are they different?

You may read an interesting comparison:

The Difference Between Push and Pull Marketing Strategies
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3P’s of Profession, today – Passion, Priority and Paycheck

It is always a question for everybody at some point in a professional career.

  • Should I follow my passion and not bother much about my pay-check?
  • Should I prioritise my monetary needs only and continue work unhappily for an uninterrupted pay-check?
  • Should I combine my passion and my needs to earn a decent pay-check yet balance my personal life?

The answer to each of these questions determines how our career requires to be re-shaped.

For a moment, let us leave aside these questions and ponder over the reasons for the ‘The Great Resignation ‘syndrome that has thrown up a huge challenge for both employees and employers the world over. In US 41% of working people have quit their jobs. In India, nearly 25% in Tech Sector have quit work since last year and millions have lost jobs in both organised and unorganised sectors. They are either jobless or transitioning to new jobs, some going back to their family business or vocation and a very few of them are starting on their own. The scenario, post the pandemic, is posing new challenges in our profession and is making us think of options that are good for our career and family life in the long run. The employers too are grappled with resignations and the vacant positions are getting hard to fill-in,unless the job description makes a few concessions to an aspiring employee.

As per a LinkedIn study, there is a 50% increase Y-o-Y in profile updates, and it is true for every job portal. People are unhappy in their present jobs and quit them for various reasons – burnouts, no recognition, uninspiring work, low pay-check, gender disparity, no employee care, inflexible work hours etc. Gen Z leads ‘The Great Resignation’ pack at 80%, followed by millennials and Gen X.

The pandemic has posed a serious question about the definition of work and is now being re-written to include what is best for a work-life balance and priorities in life. People are switching jobs for flexibility, better employee perks, work location, family needs or for pursuing their favourite field of work. The brave ones oozing self-confidence in their skills and savings, go on their own to create their worlds.

Going back to those three questions, what would we pick? 

The first option is riskier but not so if we have saved enough to wither away the possible tough times that we could expect with this option. The second one is for prioritising money over an uninspiring job, bad boss, stagnating career, yet pay- check is regular and mortgages / EMIs are paid on time. The 3rd option also looks to be an interesting choice for it helps to meet family needs with lesser work hours and remote work with just enough pay but more time to pursue a field of work or hobby that we are passionate about, or we could also pick up new skills or pursue an academic course that we have been postponing for a long time.

We are the one to decide what works best for us. There is no single prescription for all.

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Cleaning the mind – my way

A struggle always goes on inside me. Am I doing the right thing? Is my action a reflection of what I think and how I change myself toward a cleaner and clearer way of mending my mind? When I say a ‘cleaner or clearer way’, it is about my conscience of doing the right things in a transparent, logical way.

Introspection is always the best tool to see the weak and bright spots in our journey, whether personal or professional. It is a way of doing a course correction of weak spots which is so essential that we re-align ourselves back towards fulfilling our objectives or goals. We can’t afford to wait till the end as enough resources or time may not be available for the last mile push that is much needed to taste success.

I believe success or achievement is always a process, staying clear of cobwebs in our mind and you never get there by only luck or favours. For me, it is a continuous process.

Happy Diwali !

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It’s a War – Artificial Vs Natural

Marketing is all about enhancing both the innate and absolute needs of human population – sensual, egoistic, pompous, lustrous, gobbling, auditory, bodily and mental. Today, AI is helping the marketeers to visualise these needs and also create them with wide variations. The result is that you have a plethora of options that tempt you to empty your wallets.

Our daily personal and work lives are going to be more controlled and tightly scheduled to get the best out of the gadgets that we experience.

We will not be allowed to deviate from the way these products guide / control us but the software developers or product designers are the ones who will re-write how they will have to function or change based on how we perceive our thoughts or needs. There is constant innovation of products from tech giants, hand-held device or electronic appliance manufacturers, auto or machinery makers; and a marketing war is on our hands with artificial intelligence overtaking our natural intelligence. There is no doubt that AI is an evolution of human intelligence and a machine algorithm works on itself to multiply the possibilities of AI in a wider canvass.

With all these developments, we still have the option of moving away as a subject in this marketing blitzkrieg and we could lead a blissful life that resonates more with nature and that quells materialistic expectations to achieve an inner peace.

Are we game for this life today and in the future?

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Business Sustainability over a century – An Indian Model

There are numerous business houses in India that have survived many decades and some of them are older than 100 years. The founding fathers of these businesses had such a great vision and foresight of how their businesses needed to survive long years in the interest of community and economy of the nation. They had built their business on a strong foundation of values – ethical, social relevance, economical sustenance and environmental awareness. A sustainable business does not need any newer definition of Corporate Governance. These Corporate houses and the then Indian Governments co-existed so purposefully, unmindful of global competitions and resource crunch. The unselfish entrepreneurism of the founders, always keeping the consumers in mind, amply underlines the need for businesses to be always customer and people centric. They created lakhs of employment opportunities for successive generations to earn, live, thrive and prosper.

Business sustainability is the buzz word today in the corporate world but every business must be aware that there are business groups and entities like Birla Group, Wadia Group, Times of India, Shalimar Paints, TATA Group, Shapoorji Pallonji Group, Dabur, Kirloskar Group, Godrej & Boyce, ITC, TVS Group, SBI etc are living examples on how they have sustained their existence over many decades.

Not with standing two World Wars, the Great Global depression, India’s independence struggle, the population growth, the licence-permit raj, controls on foreign exchange and expansion, and the reforms of the 1990s: a handful of Indian companies have seen it all, and adapted along the way to do well. India has around three dozen century-old companies that are listed and still actively traded. One will be surprised to see such a long list of corporations that have weathered many storms and are still standing tall as a true testimony to the indomitable spirit of their leaders, their business acumen and ethical mind set.

“Response to change is the first condition for survival in business,” says Dwijendra Tripathi, a former IIM professor who authored The Oxford History of Indian Business

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies_in_India

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A Creative Organization

How could an organization be creative? How creative ideas of both a start-up or established one be put into practice to stay ahead of the curve and survive? Both consume a lot of energy and resources of varying degrees yet both want to be leaders in their own area of expertise.

Institutionalizing a culture of creativity and excellence in an organization is the first step of the leader at the helm. This requires an enormous understanding of its people and their behaviour and their quest to do something different, adding value to the work they do everyday. There needs to be constant motivation and inspiration from the top to unleash a sense of creativity in people, showing them the avenues they could let their creative thinking to take shape and be nurtured. Many large organizations that exist today were not created overnight but were built brick by brick to realise the creativity and skills of its people.

The likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Walmart, Toyota or those Oil giants have allowed their people to think big and creative to add many revenue streams that increased their top lines. On the other hand, we have also seen many large corporations that had failed to innovate – Polaroid, Pan AM, Compaq, General Motors, Kodak, Yahoo, Toy’R’Us are great examples of how lack of ideas could cripple their growth and business. Inertia of being larger companies drag them into becoming a soulless organizations inimical to change.

It is necessary to encourage nerve and spunk, inject a spirit of fanaticism among the employees of organizations, simultaneously dismantling the layers of hierarchical hurdles at the same time. This will help to cope with today’s bewildering complexity created by global competition, mergers, acquisitions and cross cultural alliances. Eliminating hierarchy is not about doing away with titles and designations but instilling the entrepreneurship in employees, recognising the need for equality among the superiors and subordinates , removing the fear and barriers of communications and embolden them to speak up on flaws in strategies affecting the business and offering creative solutions to address them. Acknowledging their creative ideas is not enough but rewarding them to contribute more that add value to company’s operations.

Growth is impossible without systematically correcting past errors and continuously executing new ideas to become leaders.

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A journey that had challenges and successes..

I look back those 40 years since my first days in an office….

The best part of career life for any individual is mid and late 20’s when you get introduced to a factory, a corporate set-up, an art world or a field work that provide you with loads of experience in understanding your customers, aligning your daily work to keep them happy, manoeuvring the challenges at work place and importantly, keeping pace with learning newer skills. I am no exception to this phase of life and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed working for corporates that were well known in the industry and at the same time learnt how one had to be always customer focussed to enjoy success. These corporate giants are still the leaders in their own industry having gone through a phenomenal growth.

Travel and work constituted a major part of my early work life, trying to find new customers and the good part of it was I could visit new places and befriend good people. Selling a varied product line was as exciting as a new recipe from your spouse’s kitchen and it gave an insight to industries, their customers and their success factors. Over these years I learnt the importance of improving the product or services to always keep your customers within your fold and later on when I had ventured into an entrepreneurial role, this aspect helped me to be always mindful of emerging customer trends and their expectations. In my late 30’s, I had an opportunity to indulge in social service and develop my public speaking and communication skills while serving a world wide service organization. That was also an important phase in my career when I had to take a few risks and seek a different career path. With income on a steady decline, I chose a new field, Information Technology in late 1990’s. In the beginning this was considered to be not a wise decision and there was every chance that I would be starting as an entry level programmer or junior business analyst at that age.

Thanks to the organization that had trained me to be an ERP Consultant, I was able to bring in all my functional experience into consulting and I could start my new career at a comparatively advantageous position than many of my colleagues. This move also had its own share of problems with dot.com bubble exploding at the dawn of the century. After a struggle for a year or two, I had to grab a new lease of life in moving out of the country for assignments. This gave me the required exposure to be on a firmer ground and there was no going back since then. The organizations that I had worked for in the first 10 years of this century, presented me ample opportunities to hone my skills in acquiring and retaining new customers with quality deliverables and be responsible to hire and mentor hundreds of budding and aspiring youngsters to take to Process and Business consulting as their professions. What is most satisfying in this stint was that I was able to take care of my family reasonably well, raise my children with good education / comfort and to build new homes as it offered me a much needed financial stability.

My decision to move to a well known global IT leader with an impeccable brand recall, certainly helped me to learn the pseudo- entrepreneurial side of running a business, provided me with a global exposure to different work ethics across geographies and to sharpen my consulting and people skills. It was indeed an fascinating experience to work with these multi-nationals and this has come handy TODAY to be able to continue my journey as an independent consultant after I bid adieu to a satisfied corporate life.

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Create a Product or a Consumer?

Peter Drucker had said that the purpose of business is to create a consumer. How true is this statement with the Start-ups and the Unicorns of the past decade creating new consumers of products and services?

What drives the efforts of a business to create a consumer? Is it a strategy or a structure? what drives what? Some say Strategy drives structure and some say the reverse. There will be a point when we realise that the reverse- structure driving a strategy – is ineffective because the outcome of the strategy – what you want – is not exactly what you had intended when the structure was created. It is always prudent to let the strategy drive the structure because the structure can be modified when adjustments are needed to execute a strategy in reaching consumers. What we exactly want is achieved only after many iterations and alterations in execution. There are of course exceptions due to environmental hurdles such as trade barriers, local laws or limitations in organizational resources that make the structure rigid and consequently the outcome in the form a product or service that was envisioned is impacted.

Let us understand more about strategy- where does it come from? We do many SWOT analyses of strengths and weaknesses of the little sparks of ideas that can change the world or create value additions to a product or service. People’s psychological impulses lead to strategies, but they get conditioned by an external environment. In a real term, strategy gets evolved from an environment which has multiple layers – macro forces like technology, economics, politico – and micro socio -cultural aspects.  Sneakers for example are classic example of how simple foot wears have taken shapes in terms of materials and comfort – fabric, size, weight, Safety, sole, or contour- for manufacturers like Nike, Adidas, Reebok who constantly engaged with people’s emotional and comfort needs and have been innovating for several decades to make newer models just to serve a single purpose of covering our feet. Further creating a baby-sitter job comes out of both husband and wife becoming income earners or a home medical attendant is hired to look after aging, sick parents while you are away for work.

Starting or nurturing a business is always done with a creation of a consumer in mind, duly acknowledging macro environmental factors and matching the opportunities / threats with the internal strengths / weaknesses of the organization.

#strategy

#createconsumer

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I.C.F.D

One always laments why things are not happening the way he/she wants them to be. We visualize, make elaborate plan, gather resources, yet the outcome is not reached.

Intent

A business strategy is conceived keeping the desired outcome in mind. Thoughts and views are put together, the process is evolved, people are briefed yet we hit a road block during the course of its execution. The intent to do a certain action is surely in our minds but we fail to follow the process with a total commitment from all stake holders. That is where we start seeing the lack of seriousness in people who have made that commitment.

Commitment

Priority is accorded to something else to douse the day to day fire and not to a strategy that the leadership had intended. The leader believes that the team had promised commitment in taking the intent to successive steps to reach its logical outcome but the team digresses midway thinking that each of its members is doing his/her job. No intervention by leaders is made to take a corrective action because they are not yet aware of what has gone wrong as no feedback has reached them. Operational inefficiencies derail the process and the outcome.

Focus

What is totally missing is the focus at all levels in identifying what are the show stoppers and how to make them good. Focus needs constant attention, follow up meetings, fixing up responsibilities, re-aligning the resources and re-iterating the damage the failure of the strategy would cost in terms of time lapse to customers or market and loosing the competitive edge.

Delivery

However great may be the intention to drive a strategy, a successful delivery happens only when the intent is followed by commitment and focus. It is true for a Government, an Organization and an Individual.

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2021 – How does it look like ( Contd.)

Digital Health Passport

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The future is going to witness a new document that an individual will virtually carry or be expected to produce is Digital Health Passport.

COVID has pushed nations to be more demanding from citizens or travellers, information about their Health, Pre-existing diseases, Lab Reports, insurance cover, Vaccine history etc. Similar to what you already have, a digital locker on cloud to secure your driving license details, Licence plate certificate nos.,Insurance papers etc, this Digital health passport is an additional docket that you will be required to show on demand to Airlines, Hotels, Concert Halls and Cinemas or ER services during an emergency. Many advanced nations have a record of what medical tests have been performed on their citizens but usage by other agencies are not prevalent today.

We expect these data to be as secure as possible and are available with only Govt departments, yet we do not know how they can be extracted with sophisticated software tools. You may be surprised to receive marketing mailers reminding your next date for Doctor’s appointment, reminder about health insurance premium or about a new policy or the validity of vaccine dose taken and a parking or speeding ticket.

DHP will invoke a new era of citizens’ surveillance and may be linked to an already available Citizen Registry – like SSN or Aadhar ( India).

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Women Leaders

It is heartening to note there are more women donning CxO hats in top firms around the world but there is a strong feeling that a gender bias still exists in organisations, more so in India.

Over the past few years women have risen faster on the career path than what it was a decade ago. If their numbers don’t match up to men it doesn’t mean only gender bias is the reason. It is evident that men far outnumber women in organisations and obviously the competition at top is not a match given the leadership criteria for both the genders are the same.

Example, from an Indian context: The number of technical graduates coming out of IITs and top notch engineering colleges has less than 10% women engineers even today and hence it is low at the entry level in technology firms.Their low % about two decades ago determined the no of women vying for top positions today. Note, this percentage is already mandated by Indian Govt to be > 20% and that is really gratifying.

In IIMs, it is much better with women management graduates passing out at a ratio of 25% and below about a few years ago to a healthy 33% today. These are the women who will be ready to take leadership up positions in 10-15 years from now and they will be more women occupying senior roles.

Worry not about the present but be positive that you, our society and I will make it an even match in the future.

#womenCxO

Source : 

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=percentage+of+women+in+IIMs&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-in&client=safari
https://www.google.co.in/search?q=percentage+of+women+in+IITs&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-in&client=safari

What bananas can tell us about supply chains | MIT Sloan

How complex it is to move the bananas to the stores in the least possible time and least cost ?

A seemingly inconsequential logistics problem is indeed a complex supply chain example.

Interesting read 👏

In a new book, MIT professor Yossi Sheffi examines supply chain complexity, artificial intelligence, and the future of work.
— Read on mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-bananas-can-tell-us-about-supply-chains

Are you a leader or a coach or a mentor?

A Leader sets up a vision and leads a team to achieve it. Not everyone matches his / her speed.

A Coach understands a person’s strength and channels it to deliver the objective. He lets you perform on the stage by not being with you.

A Mentor provides valuable inputs at intervals in a person’s journey to realise his or her true potential. He never travels with you but is a lifelong companion.

Choose one or all the three based on your purpose of engagement. If you follow a Guru, don’t bother about choosing one, for he leads you on the right path, helps you if you are struck at a place, he hones your skills and he is a life time companion.

Work Ethics and Personal Ethics – Are they different ?

I don’t think work ethics and personal ethics are different. The way we organise our personal lives is no different than how we do our jobs at the work place and at the public place.

It is a culmination of values that had been told or taught to us in our childhood and adolescence. Moral values and ethical practices are so important that we must pass them onto the younger generation to turn them into responsible adults and citizens. There are plenty of ways to spoil the young minds through cinema, social media but there are only a few ways this could be done right.

This moral education is missing in our school curriculum and teachers too don’t have time to impart the children these values.

A responsible society needs to create avenues of educating adolescents through value educating lectures or debates. This is where the role of social organisations become important to take up the mantle to train young minds.

Wish more people like us ( parent, teacher, educational administrator, social worker and Psychologist) are prepared to contribute to this yeoman service of creating better citizens for tomorrow.

#education #valueeducation # #ethics

Poverty is a creation of politics

More people are getting into murky politics because it is the best way of making huge money irrespective of what you had studied or who your ancestors were. We have seen,for generations, politicians were richer than entrepreneurs and the trend is growing shamelessly unabated.

Every government says it is committed to wean away money from politics but the politicians manage to clandestinely work with government machinery and law enforcement that are supposed to uphold law and justice.

A recent post in this website said there is poverty when politicians are getting richer day by day than industrialists and entrepreneurs. How true this is!

We fancy jobs in governments are prepared to spend to make our way through the gutters of political boundaries that are controlled by politicians. Agreed there are a few saints in politics but their voices are stifled by the goons that serve the masters.

We spend in thousands and lakhs of rupees to get our work done as ‘ speed money’ and are also one of the root causes as partners in crime in spreading the disease in our community.

#poverty #politics #lawenforcement

Anger Management

When you are angry, you are just a character in someone else’s story. But when you let your anger go, you reclaim your own story and become your own protagonist again.

How often we have seen careers or relationships are ruined due to anger that go uncontrolled. It is the primary reason why some people could not achieve what they had set out for. It clouds our thoughts and we don’t think in a rational manner. Consequently the actions we take in those moments may not be the correct ones.

Everyone gets angry at trivial and justifiable things but we know how anger management plays an important element in shaping us what we are and defining our character in dealing with people.

Psychologist prescribes many anger management techniques as a part of a therapy when it is considered as a mental disorder impacting one’s way of life for a longer period of time. But let us dwell on only occasional mood swings due to anger that are not harmful to us and to others. In our day to day professional and personal lives they may help to balance our relationships with colleagues and relatives.

Meditation is one way of practicing anger management and it requires proper guidance from experts. There are other simple techniques as listed below:

Anger Management Techniques

1.Count to 20 before saying anything.

2.Leave the room for several minutes, or hours, if necessary, before discussing sensitive issues that may provoke your anger.

3.Write out a response to a problem before tackling it orally or in debate.
This will give you time to think about the best approach to a problem rather than responding with random anger.

4.Keeping a diary (journal) and writing about negative emotions to get them out of your system.

5.You may also want to keep a pet, since studies show that petting a dog or cat, for example, helps to reduce blood pressure levels and harmful substances in your system that can damage blood vessels if left unchecked.

6. Talking over situations with a trusted friend and venting to a therapist.

Ref: https://lnkd.in/esiZAe-X

Conviction and Compromise

Conviction ( a strong belief) and compromise don’t go together.

Many great accomplishments were done by people who had convictions in what they had believed in. A small detergent / chemical manufacturer,Dhirubani dreamed and nurtured his business to become a colossal of a company called Reliance Industries that catapulted the surname Ambani to sky high. Friends having the same zeal and goal got together with Rs 10000 loan from one of the wives and established the biggest start-up this country has seen in Infosys. They have grown their businesses with a clear objective of becoming a leader in their industries.

On the other side of the fence, we have seen leaders or founders faltering from their grand vision, getting into debt traps and falling hard from the pedestals. Compromises on business ethics, over ambition, poor customer expectation management and financial irregularities drove high fliers like Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways to fail. Similar fate happened to Onida to disappear after being a top seller in TV business. Nano had an early death in spite of it being an affordable car on crowded Indian roads.

People tend to dilute their efforts to sustain their vision that they had strongly believed in. Such compromises by leaders in organisations or a society leave a deep scar on their persona and their failures turn into case studies in business schools.

Conviction in a cause or belief for the right reasons may get you into trouble at times or be inconvenient to others. Eventually it presents a fruitful outcome. That belief also makes the followers to adapt to a similar path and thus it becomes infectious. Compromise is a short cut to fast track your process to reach a goal or accomplish an objective but the outcome always has flaws that cannot be reversed.

Clarity in conviction gets one to the top and be respected.

#conviction #compromise #leadership

Why do we glorify everything as “the greatest”?

These are the some of “the greatest” that we hear:

Dad,Mom, Parents, Friend, Leader, Boss,Country, Political Party, Actor, Sportsman, Organisation and so on…

Greatest is not a permanent stature to any of them mentioned above as it keeps changing in one’s perception over the years. They have created an impact that has got them that adjective. It is just a recognition and honour one is bestowed with. There are living examples of many eminent persons having that tag as they continue to inspire people around them. There have been many role models in our different phases of life and they don’t stay long as such.

Once we tag someone as ‘the greatest’, he or she always has still some scope to improve and that’s how they stay true to that word for a long time. It is a precarious position to stay contented with that title because as you stay basked in that fame, you fail to stay relevant to what is going on around you. Nobody is ‘the greatest’ for ever because they have been constantly improving in what they think, do and advocate.

It is dangerous for you to get tagged as ‘ the greatest’ because staying there long without continuing to make impactful actions that appeal to your people or community, gets you into complacency that pushes you down the pedestal and the admirers or followers look for someone who is afresh in thoughts and actions.

As a motivating tool, it is good for all of us to strive and work towards to be called ‘the greatest’, but it requires unrelenting hard work and right methods in our actions towards a really true and noble objective. Nobody sets out to be ‘the greatest’ and it is the people around you who labels you ‘ the greatest’ after seeing your actions and accomplishments.