Peace of Mind

#LivingStories
The governor's residence in Mumbai is a sprawling 47 acre ecosystem of rich biodiversity, filled with peacocks and other creatures. Two decades ago, to control the snake population, an officer released a pair of mongoose. Their progeny is now endangering the peacock population by breaking their eggs and eating their chicks.

#MyLearning
Our bodies ecosystem is  a self-regulated system operating in a state of perfect balance. Into this balanced system, we release the ‘mongoose’ of emotional stress, which uncontrolled, is often liable to endanger our peace of mind.

Image: Deviant art

Focused Motivation

"To compose, I need to be happy and to have free mind space, " says A.R. Rahman the Oscar winning music composer. While Leander Paes, who won the US Open Mixed Doubles title along with Martina Hingis says, "if I can keep Martina happy,  if I can keep her relaxed,  the tennis I don't even have to worry about. "

#MyLearning
Focusing our motivation results in our single-minded immersion and harnessing of our emotions into performing and learning. The emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.

5 Stolen Recipes to Do and Become

A recipe has no soul, You as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.” - Thomas Keller, chef, writer, restaurateur.

Every artist gets asked the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" The honest artist answers, "I steal them."

Here are a 5 stolen life recipes to which I have added my soul (aka my learning spin) to;

1. Adapt to the times

Restaurateurs today, realising that food is not the only carrot drawing diners in are giving more emphasis to the design and giving their places a makeover. Attention is being paid to the decor, layout, music. lighting, the clean fragrance (of herbs or fresh coffee and bread or wood charring in a clay oven) comely staff. All of which come together very nicely to pull in the customers. Ultimately however, as Chef Solomon says, as good as the decor maybe, it will be the food which will pull in the customer.  

Know when to focus on targets, when to pay attention to emotions and when to focus on the changing needs of customers. Be sensitive to the ecosystem and respond accordingly, taking care to never forget your essence.

2. Connect to the environment

When we think of the word 'food', we only think of nutrition, says chef Pankaj Walia. But the truth is our connection with food is deep and spiritual; something that our ancestors realised and respected. Archaeology professor Dr Kurush Dalal recommends slow cooking to establish the connection. Slow cooking, he says, recognises the connection between plate, people, planet and culture; things we have forgotten to correlate these days while munching on fast food."

People, planet and culture - each, some, or all three, are integral to our every action. Recognising the connection between our actions and their impact on the three, can help us become more conscious and connected to our environment.

 3. Connect to the Universe

“You’ll find a sense of calm overtaking you as soon as you pray or sprinkle water around your food before your meal," says Prof. Kurush Dalal. That time - even if it is for a split second - makes you appreciate the world, its wonders and the food on your table. It connects you with the Universe.”

Ritual or ceremony is a celebration, a tradition. Through these rites we re-live, re-enact, honor, remember, and call forth ancient spiritual teachings, tradition and divine spirits. Studies show that they are good for people’s physical and mental well-being. They help make life seem predictable, under control, and meaningful.

4. Have a hobby

Money isn't  the only thing stock market man Ramesh Damani kneads. He has a thing for dough which made him seek out baking and attend a week's bakery course in Paris. Asked for the similarity between brokers and bakers, Damani's reply is, "Both like the feel of dough....and both (investment and baking) need a lot of patience."

A hobby is an echo of the soul, and if you are following your heart, so can be your profession. Seek answers within, discover the parts between your profession and your hobbies which are similar, or support the other.

6. Play your cards wisely

"I realised my face was never going to be my fortune," says  Prahlad Kakkar, ad guru. "(So) I decided to impress ladies by tickling their palate - good food, full-bodied wine, candlelight and my storytelling powers are a lethal combination.  It has always worked. Food is much more than fuel for your body."

Remember what Randy Pausch said, "we cannot change the cards we are dealt with, just how we play the hand."

CALL TO ACTION

Now that you have a bunch of recipes to choose from, make your choice, put the ingredients of your choice into the pot, marinate in a thick sauce of motivation for a few days. Then light the fire of your passion, stir in a good dose of determination and serve. 

Bon Apetit!

9 Thoughts to Craft The Leader In You

Though much of the art and science of leadership remains unchanged over time, it needs to be crafted to suit the needs of the current environment. The following stories of contemporary leaders and views of leadership gurus, should give you food for thought to craft your individual leadership style and craft it to suit your time and context.. 

1.Reinvent Yourself  

"Companies fail or are successful because they either get or miss market transitions", says John Chambers, CEO and Chairman of Cisco. ..."What Cisco has done is that we compete on market transitions, not against competitors...We have reinvented ourselves five times"

Reinventing is not a necessary evil to be undertaken to undertake to survive. Being inquisitive - a hankering to learn new things, can lead to seeing the world of work as an opportunity and make it easier to adapt - a quality essential in the present times.

2 Give your people permission to fail

"One of the saddest things that happen with creativity...I think sometimes it isn't expressed because of fear," says Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel. "Everyone is born very very creative. But at some point it can be scary to do something new." To overcome this fear, Snapchat encourages the idea of 'failing fast', since it's better that those failures happen in private before being released on users.

3.Play for Win-Win

Unlike Steve Ballmer, Satya Nadella is clear that times have changed and he is taking tough decisions. For him,  competition is not a zero sum game. Just because Android wins does not mean Microsoft loses.  If Android wins great. I'll also put Office 365 on Android so it can be a win - win,  it doesn't have to be a win - lose.

3. Make the right life choices

"There is nothing like work-life balance, there is only one life", believes Padmasree Warrior, former CTSO of Cisco. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman Of Microsoft India, agrees with her wholeheartedly. "You live life the way you want it. Life is about choices," he say

4.Practice brevity in communication

A Microsoft research reports that the average person's attention span is just 8 seconds, a second less than that of a goldfish.  For humans it used to be 12 seconds in 2000. Abundant reason why CEOs and you and me, need to communicate well internally and externally in the most effective manner.

5. Surround yourself with the best people

Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist usually gets involved worn CEOS in their first 100 days  that they  build up their credibility quickly. And this what she tells them, in that order - listen to customers, surround yourself with the best senior management and communicate with the board.

6. Make your knowledge 'future ready'
"Half-life of knowledge is getting shorter and shorter with new breakthrough technologies and discoveries," says Management Guru Jagdish Seth, Management guru.."Therefore old perspectives and evidence are no longer relevant.We need to develop or discover new perspectives which are suitable for tomorrow's world"

7. Tailor your communication to the audience

Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik explains how in the Gita, there is a three way communication between Krishna the speaker, and three receivers; Arjuna, the seeker of knowledge, Sanjay the transmitter of the knowledge  and Dhritirashtra, who is eager to know only the fate of his sons. This, Devdutt observes, is aimed to draw attention to the complexity of any communication. Are people around you interested in what you are saying (Arjuna),  are they merely memorising (Sanjay), or are they just disinterested or even suspicious (Dhritirashtra)? 

Tailor your communication accordingly.

8. Be Considerate of your people

On his last journey from Guwahati to Shillong for a speaking engagement, the late president's car was being escorted in front by three soldiers travelling in a Gypsy. Seeing one of them standing throughout the journey, Kalam repeatedly asked his aide to request him to sit down, but his aide was not able to get him on the phone. At the end of the journey, Kalam invited the soldier to his room, shook hands with him, thanked him and enquired whether he had eaten.

9. Appreciate - Motivate

Debutant Actress Ruhi Singh says, "When you enter the sets of (film director) Madhur Bhandarkar's film, you hear words like 'jalwa' (charisma/luster/ splendor) and 'aag laga de' (be on fire) which is a driving force for us. I had to shoot a waterfall sequence in the night, and it was freezing cold. But I could only do it because (Madhur) makes sure everyone feels comfortable before filming." 


Call To Action
Time to craft your own leadership recipe? Set the fire going!

Starve your doubts. Believe

When he first approached his boss at Kuoni India, with the idea of offering visa processing services to the American embassy in 2001, Zubin Karkaria met with understandable skepticism. Theirs was the toughest visa regime, with more processes and documentation than any other country. But Kuoni had nothing to lose in letting Karkaria  try, and when he did submit the proposal - the Americans said yes! Today, the visa services operation has turned into a global money spinner. It has captured 50% share of the market and contributes to 60% of Kuoni’s FY14 profits.

The Data Continuum

The seemingly unlimited data available to us nowadays, seduces easily into an illusion of certainty and objectivity, says Jason Gonsalves, MD, BBH London. But ultimately, data will only provide a description of what has happened. Not what will. The alternative is to look at the available data and come to an original conclusion, or imagine a new application or action from the data. Data is the fuel of creativity. Creative execution and constant reflection on the learning becomes wisdom.

5 Ways to Never Give Up

What do you do when a project you have invested everything on - your blood, sweat, tears, mind and heart - proves to be a failure? Why, just get up, dust yourself and get going again, of course! Here are five stories I have gathered of how some people did it. 
1. Take pride in past success
Dustin Brown ranked 102, on beating Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon, but losing his very next match to Viktor Troicki. 
"It doesn't matter if I lost or not, no will ever be able to take that (beating Nadal) away from me."

2. Respect failure
Howard Schultz after a major setback at Starbucks.
"Celebrate failure, learn from the failures, and not hide from mistakes". He also spoke of the bottle of Mazagran, a coffee drink he helped launch in the 90's. It proved be a spectacular failure. He now keeps a bottle of the drink on his table, to remind him to do a reality check on his success when he's up, and equally - never give up, when he's down. 

3. Reconnect with your passion.
Filmmaker Deepa Mehta on the failure of her film 
'Monsoon' at the box office. 
She remembered her father, who, when told about her decision to take up filmmaking, had encouraged her, but cautioned her about life's unknowns, "You make a film because you have incredible passion and because you want to tell a story. If it does well, good. But if it doesn't, you can't do anything about it, but you've had the satisfaction of doing something honest." 

4. Reframe strategy
Satya Nadella on how he handles the failure of the Windows OS for mobile phones. 
Competition for him, is not a zero sum game. He believes, "Just because Android wins does not mean Microsoft loses. If Android wins great. I'll also put Office 365 on Android so it can be a win - win, it doesn't have to be a win - lose."

5. Keep the spirit
After Edmund Hillary's great, but failed attempt, at scaling Mount Everest in 1952.
Though he regarded himself a failure. He did not however, lose his spirit. At a function organized to recognize the attempt, people greeted him with thunderous applause. Hillary, walked onto the stage, balled a fist at the picture of the mountain and said, "You beat me the first time, but I’ll beat you the next time, because you’ve grown all you are going to grow… but I’m still growing."  

He beat Everest on 29th May 1953.

Back to Your Roots

"Understanding where you are from help you better understand where you want to go."
                          - US Ambassador to India Richard Verma, describing his recent visit to his hometown in Punjab. 

The Awareness Framework

Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results. - Robin Sharma

When Paul O'Neill arrived as CEO at Alcoa, he didn't hold his troops to criteria that CEOs commonly use, such as profit margins, sales growth rates, or share appreciation. His singular standard: time lost to employee injuries. By focusing on just one  highly impactful habit, O’Neill managed to create change at different levels of awareness within the organization, the company's annual net income went up by five times and its market capitalization rose by $27 billion.

The Awareness Framework can help us understand the deeper and wide ranging implications of the focus on safety:

1. Task Awareness: Empowered employees began to offer suggestions and accidents were immediately brought to the attention of executives. As a result, the accident rate declined — ultimately to about 5% of the national average.

2. Situational Awareness:  Workers realizing that the management was keen to examine and improve every inefficient and dangerous manufacturing process, increased  communication among employees. Line workers offered suggestions to improve efficiency, and the company underwent a renaissance.

3. Emergent Awareness: Employees started recommending business improvements that otherwise would have remained out of sight. One day, a low-level employee made a suggestion that quickly worked its way to the general manager. Within a year, profits on the product doubled. By creating patterns of better communication, a chain reaction started that lifted profits.

4.  Self Awareness:  ''Paul came in and got us to do things we never thought we could do,'' says L. Richard Milner, head of Alcoa's automotive unit. The safety habit influenced every part of the employees’ lives - how they worked, ate, played, lived, spent, and communicated. Employees’ thoughts, feelings and  beliefs and their attitudes and reactions to changes in the environment improved. Their attitudes to people around  having a different point of view also took a turn for the better. Hard-core, ladder-climbing, capitalist executives turned into soft, feel-good samaritans, adept at identifying, co-opting, and shaping behavior patterns to increase profits.

By creating awareness around safety, O'Neill unleashed a pattern with the power to start a chain reaction. A reaction that improved a host of processes in the organization, created a employee-friendly environment, aligned people to the company’s goals and increased profits.

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Want a Business coach to clarify/create/action the awareness process?
Contact Coach Uday

Living mindfully

When we think of the word 'food', we only think of nutrition, says chef Pankaj Walia. But the truth is our connection with food is deep and spiritual; something that our ancestors realised and respected. Archaeology professor Dr Kurush Dalal recommends slow cooking to establish the connection. Slow cooking, he says, recognises the connection between plate, people, planet and culture; things we have forgotten to correlate these days while munching on fast food.

#Viewpoint
People, planet and culture - each, some, or all three, are integral to our every action. Recognising the impact of our actions on the three, can help us become more mindful citizens.

How to be reborn

Kishore Biyani with his Big Bazaar and Pantaloons (now with Aditya Birla Group) was a first mover in big format organized retail. Now he is seriously exploring to practice being 'Reborn'. Biyani's theme of Reborn essentially is about the need for an organization to reinvent itself....
Read on...
http://eepurl.com/bqPazr

The Right Place at the Right Time

When they first started making cars, Sir Henry Royce, and his partner, Charles Rolls, would build them near Savile Row, the London street where the city's top tailors had their establishments. They would urge their customers to have their coaches finished with trimming to match favourite suits and gowns.

Source: http://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing

Management Learning: Whether at life or work, being in the right place at the right time, with the right product, increases the chances of successful outcomes to your endeavours.