Mindfulness Practice

“When asked which leadership tools they aim to develop, most MBA students list “practical skills” as highest on their priority lists. We have found that understanding oneself, one’s triggers, and one’s emotions through mindfulness & meditation enhances one’s ability to master these concrete skill sets”. - Yael Shy in Harvard Business Review

Insight
Practical skills call for good judgment in action, conduct, & the handling of everyday matters. Mindfulness helps us to concentrate on the here & now, become more aware of how matters affect us, & learn to change the way they relate to our inner self.

What to Do When Stuck

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes it was 29 years.

#MyLearning
When stuck, it is a good idea to surrender yourself to your subconscious mind. Many solutions to niggling problems come to you during the 'Brahmakalam', the early morning hours between 3 and 5 when, acording to Hindu scriptures Brahma's consort Saraswati, the Godess of knowledge, resides in the brain. In other words the mind is at it's best. - Stephen Hawking

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.

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.

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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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.