And what i want to achieve is that.......

"And how do you intend to find a solution to this problem?" Dr APJ Abdul Kalam asks the young boys and girls of India. Everyone in the audience is stunned. They are emotionally charged but unable to provide a befitting reply. And Dr Kalam then shares his vision 2020 with all of them and suddenly everything begins to make sense.



Sounds like a riddle? Yes, it does. Allow me to tell you the context.



Dr APJ Abdul Kalam has made a very pertinent observation in his book 'Ignited Minds'. He says that India was under British control for a very long period. And a very big majority had started to accept the situation as a must-be. Then in the year 1857, they first saw the dream of free India. Every Indian started to desire freedom and strive for it. It took a poor and oppressed nation 90 years to achieve that vision. But the bottom line is very clear. If everybody has a common vision, a nation is able to realize it sooner or later.



Dr Kalam then asks, "And what is the vision today? What is it that we are trying to achieve? If freedom from the British inspired every Indian from 1857 onwards, do we have any such burning desire today?" And he goes on to say that absence of any such common cause or vision only is the biggest problem before us. When an entire nation does not know where to go, where would it go? Nowhere is the only possible answer. And this is the pressing problem of today, feels Dr Kalam.

The situation can be compared with many travellers walking here and there with no destination in sight. They walk daily, sometimes they come back, sometimes they take random turns and as a result they never reach anywhere. As a nation, what do we intend to achieve? It's a pity that the vision is not clear.

Many business schools teach Goal Setting to their students. Nearly all the companies begin with a mission statement. What about our national vision?

Dr Kalam has definitely blessed us with a very good vision document by way of his book Vision 2020. A number of people, who went through the visionary exhortation, have appreciated the same. But i do not want to share the gist of the same here. Rather i want to throw this question open here. What should be the driving force for India today? Can you please express yourself in not more than one sentence? I hope this may lead us somewhere.

Let your vision for mother India be visible here, continuously.

Faith vs Responsibility

Human relations are a very interesting and complex mix. HR has definitely grown to become an independent discipline of its own and is regarded as crucial for any business organisation. Still, it is studied as a part of many other disciplines as well. Sociology, Economics, Psychology etc are not complete without the study of human relations. Even Law as a subject studies and considers HR. For example, Section 15 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 discusses influence as one of factors that may affect the consent of a party regarding a contractual understanding.

But i want to talk about something which is instrumental in one to one relationship. There are many relations where utmost good faith is required. The relationship between, for example, a doctor and his patient, a lawyer and his client, a teacher and his student or parents and their child falls in the same category.

What is the binding force in such relations. I will call it faith and responsibility balance. Patient has faith and doctor has responsibility. Client has faith and lawyer has responsibility.And similarly, student keeps faith and teacher fulfils responsibility.

Now, this balance is very crucial. There can be a financial implication also but that is less important in such relations. It is very easy for a doctor to fulfil his contractual liability by prescribing medication and treatment but responsibility has a bigger spectrum. And the same is true for the other mentioned relationships too.

Now what binds a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher is not merely contract but faith. Money can buy services but not responsibility. It arises out of faith only. And the moment one party loses the faith, the other party is relieved of the responsibility.

Yes! This point is very important in human relations. Have faith! For God's sake, never lose it. The moment we lose faith, we relieve the service provider professional from his responsibility!

A course in Salesmanship!

What makes us an effective salesperson?

This much-talked-of topic is most misunderstood too. Everybody has an opinion on the same and the variety of available tips seems to qualify for being called noise. Recently i was reading a book 'What they still don't teach at Harvard Business School' and got a very simplified answer to the same. The formula suggested is refreshingly simple and precise.

The book presents four direct priciples to learn to sell effectively:

1. Know the Product

2. Meet a lot of people

3. Ask them to buy

4. Use common sense

That's it.

It made a lot of sense to me. The first point clearly tells every salesperson to be sure of always staying in the know of everything that the prospect may expect from him or her. Knowledge is power and it wins trust. It creates confidence. People always tend to prefer knowledgeable sales persons.

The second point is the most obvious one and the most commonly ignored one too! Meeting new people either by way of cold calling or through some promotional events is very important. Meeting them in normal course of life is even better.

The third point is all about focus. To the first timers it also teaches the importance of being on target - at all times. Some initial hesitation must be overcome if one wants to practise this point of action.

And the last point is the most important one. It's all about common sense but common sense is so uncommon these days! If one ventures to list out the mistakes one has committed in sales meetings a very vast majority of them can be covered under the heading 'lack of common sense'. Possibly a very narrow focus causes many to ignore what is visible to the neutral eye.

Try to apply these priciples in whatever you sell and see the result. And of course, we all know that selling is omnipresent!

Money, Time and Energy

Mobile has redefined the art of networking. How to make friends and how to keep the relations rejuvenated - has long been a subject matter for active discussion among thinkers and self-styled management gurus. But a small handset has challenged all those time-tested principles and techniques.

And the entire science of making friends and influencing people has come down to just two principles :
How to make friends ? Send them a message every day.
How to maintain relations? Send them a positive good morning message every day.

I do not entirely agree with these two rules. But many of my friends, relatives and students do treat them as gospel truths. And i am the victim. Every morning i receive tens of messages and the fact that you can't delete a message without opening it increases the agony. Of course, these commonplace messages do remind me of the sender but the vibrations sent telepathically from my side are not always positive.

But this morning i got a message which caught my attention and even after deleting it immediately, it refuses to leave me. And the message is :

3 stupid stages of life :
TEEN : You have time and energy but no money
ADULT : You have money and energy but no time
OLD : You have money and time but no energy!
So live every moment fully!!

How can we come out of this rut? If teens spare some time for a part time job and earn their pocket money or if adults tend to become better time managers or if the old ones continue to exercise and remain in shape - one would say. But is it that simple?

About the teen age, I am not very sure. But i can say one thing with reasonable conviction. Managing time for family and physical exercise in the adult age can help a lot. And some benefits will continue to be available in the old age as well. This may well be the most crucial life style challenge before the working population the world over today.

And the most important learning. Cellphones are just a tool. How to use it - is a valuable skill to learn!

Rajesh Khanna and the art of Time Management

Movies are a very popular source of entertainment. They also provide a very effective direction to society. In India, the young generation has always been crazy for bollywood and its movies. There have been countless actors and actresses, some of them have become stars and a very special few could get the label of superstars. Rajesh Khanna was crowned as the first superstar of Indian cinema. I want to specifically refer to one of his dialogues of one of his movies. The movie was named 'Bavarchi' (The chef). In a particular scene, he says, 'It's very simple to be great. But, it is very difficult to be simple!'

* * * * *

Time management is a very important tool to make optimum use of a person's calibre and efficiency. We are all fully aware of the fact that the almighty gives us a daily pension of 86400 seconds only. And this pension is available to everyone without any discrimination. Nobody will dispute the fact that our future entirely depends on use (or misuse) of this pension. And there are some very simple principles of time management which everyone is aware of. Let us try to enlist the most important of them.

1. Never postpone something for tomorrow that can be done today.
2. Have a time for everything and everything should be done on time.
3. Prioritize.
4. Make a to do list and keep on ticking the activities as you complete them.
5. Develop a full stop culture. Shun the comma habits.
6. Get up early. Start early. Be regular.

These are simple observations. Everyone of us has heard of them so many times. We know that these will help us greatly in our job. And we tend to promise to ourselves that we will follow them in future. And many of us keep on ignoring them in our practice.

It is really simple to be great!
But, it is definitely not easy to be simple!!

* * * * *

And let me tell you one more fact about Rajesh Khanna. He was not very punctual. He was usually very late on his sets. And i remember having read somewhere that many directors preferred Amitabh Bachchan to him primarily because Big B happened to be a much better time manager. More often that not, he was dot on time.

* * * * *
It is really simple to be great!
But, it is definitely not easy to be simple!!
And, today it is very important to follow these simple rules!!!