Education and The World's Future

This week i thought i would write something which is important and needs attention.

Saturday evening i was watching a TED video by Kiran Bir Sethi .When she completed it, i just did not even realize  that i was clapping .

Its not about how she presented the information but what i was moved by was the content itself and the relevance to the current world order.

Ok let me dive straight to the point ,lots is being said about future,especially on climate change,international politics,extremism etc. What is not being discussed or not grabbing the headlines is how education would shape that future.

That in a nut shell was what Kiran presented.Empowering children and make them feel the "I Can" attitude.

She is so right,children would make the future.We need to educate children.When i mean educate not making them books worms but real practical education.Showing them what is what and how things shape our future.

If we miss doing that now,its going to cost us dear in the future. We elders/seniors,however one would want to call, should invest time in educating kids may it be our own kid/kids or kids in the neighborhood.

Lets remember the equation, children are tomorrows future and they would shape tomorrow's world and we have a chance to shape them and there by influencing tomorrow's world. We definitely have a chance to make tomorrows world a better world.

What is being sorely missed in the growth story of many emerging markets is the fact that both growth and poverty coexist in these countries . Education is going to play a major role in how these countries are going to shape their future and also the worlds future.

Come on lets educate ,help the kids to learn things . From my side i have decided that I'll help as much as possible.I already do but given what am seeing , i need to do more. I know you would have already woken up if not now is the time. Lets do something for a better future.

Come let's do something!

Reunion

What better thing can one get in life than revisiting one's fond memories. That's exactly what happened to me today. 

It is hard to quantify in words the emotion that ran in me today , i can only summarize it in one word.It is pure joy.

The story goes like this, a close friend , a batch mate of mine from college called me on my mobile a week back. I was surprised to see his number and with full of enthusiasm i took the call. What was more surprising was that he was extremely polite,which is seldom the case. Something was not ok.

I just had to wait only a few moments before he uttered the word , "I am Getting Married" and the call was for me to be at his wedding reception.

What a moment in a friends life , i said to him i'll surely be there. My mind said finally someone has come to rag him :)

Day came , that was today and was pleasant to see four of  my mates, we are six,one could not come and other was the "Man for the occassion". 

It was pleasant to see all of them and what was more to repeat what we used to do in college. It was typical of us to crack jokes,while away time ( as does most of the college students and we were no different) and eat,how just buy one plate of what ever it was and share it amongst the six of us.

It was awesome to repeat the last one in the marriage hall,entire heads turned around to see what these four buggers were doing  ,we just did not care .We were on our own laughing to our hearts content and pulling (read as bullying) each other.

It was fun , did not even realize how two hours went by .

When i was traveling back home , i realized how much happiness those two hours gave me and how much i smiled.

In this fast paced world ,little do we realize how much relationships matter and how precious such times are.Its a blessing to have people around and its even more joyful to revisit memories.

I urge all of them to at least take some time off to meet up with friends and share your good times.It is worth every penny.

After all humans are made up of emotions and live on memories so why no revisit fond memories as often as possible.

Smile :)

Welcome 2010.

Wish you all a very happy and a prosperous new year.

To begin with ,one of my initiatives for 2010 blogging is to write on subject i am not very good at. So lets start with one which am very poor at ,you are thinking what is that. Well - "Smile".

Never can one imagine even in wildest of dream that just a flex of a muscle will melt people and solve problem a many.

It is wonderful to see anyone smile right from a kid to even the elderly. There is an eternal bliss to it, if god has given human kind one gift that should be the "Smile".

It's probably the only thing that comes free of cost which makes both the giver and the receiver happy.

So when it does not cost us anything and makes everyone happy around us ,so why not use it every time and as much as possible.

Yes,smile a mile. Keep a great smile.

Have a wonderful start to the new year . Start this year with a big smile.

Keep Smiling.

How Much Does Saving Money Help?

Folks,

Last post for 2009.I thought i will write on something that i learnt. May be a small blog.

About a couple of years back one of my colleague and a friend of mine Venkateswaran (aka Venkat Anna) gave a piece of advice that you need to save some money every month and need to have about 50K in your account i.e. liquid cash always.

I did not understand the significance of that advice at that moment but decided to follow it because some one had taken time to give me advice.

How right he had been ,last couple of weeks has thought me why that should be done by every one.

I had been entrusted a task of taking my team for an outing ,first time where instead of my organization spending , i had to spend first and had to get the entire cost reimbursed later.This was also the first time where i am doing such a thing.

The cost was a lot and it had to come from my pocket first to pay out all the advances. It was such a coincidence that i listened to that golden advice of saving money ,which was the only thing that bailed me out of sheer embarrassment from telling people that i don't have money so cannot probably take you out,if we can pool in money and then we can claim it,would not have been nice to do that to your staff.

Golden advice. It is in fact golden advice for many people . Saving money does help.

Looks like this advice also holds good for the economy ,instead of working on credit if we do look at balancing our expenditure and saving life could be much better.

Infact it isn't too late even if we start now , we should be able to avert ourselves individually from the crisis like the one that swamped us last year and also whole economy could be saved .

Of course i am no economist and there are better qualified people who can write with an lot more acumen but i feel that this simple advice does make sense. One cannot live on credit and if some one is trying to do so , its just calm before the storm and disaster in waiting.

Signing off for 2009,wish all my followers and everyone else a very happy and a prosperous new year.

See you all in 2010.

Does Hard Work Really Pay?

This is my version, many of you who will read this might just think i am only one among the lucky few but Suresh i certainly know that you'll agree to what am writing.

Just a day back, i was sitting in one of the worlds top airline's business class lounges at one of the worlds busiest airport, having my Apple Mac Laptop and doing some business work.In between talking to my boss on various business strategies, not to forget the rich creamy coffee's with world famous nuts. That went on for about 30 minutes and then picked up a CNN business traveller and Financial Times paper to flip through and the magazine to read inflight.

Boarded the flight and was relaxing for about an hour , then suddenly a thought in my mind.

"Well for a guy coming from a village who had not even travelled outside his city for more than 21 years and who had been ruing about scores of lost opportunity in the past,all of a sudden how did this all come true?" Business Class travel, Apple Laptop what not.Travelled to various countries scores of times.How did it all happen?

Is it true that iam one of those top creme de la creme? Certainly not.Iam certainly not from any of the elite B schools, neither from top tier Engineering Universities where typically you would find those god's.I am one among the scores of ordinary mortals.

So how did this all happen. I asked myself, did i have extraordinary skills in certain areas, certainly not. Was i those one of the blue eyed boys related to some one at the helm.Well i wish so. Was i a champion performer, i could be but certainly not at the moment.

So how could i have pulled this off. I took time to think and after laborious thinking few buzz words trickled. Those were, hard work, discpline,dedication,passion and lastly a unending desire to learn and take a crack at things .

Exactly , those were the qualities that i had and that has given me those opportunities. Coming from a very average back ground, these were the qualities i had in built in myself. Every defeat was looked up as an opportunity,even sucess taught what could have gone wrong, every time i failed, i never said give up but said push even harder to achieve things. Every time criticsm fell on me , i took that in a positive view and said to myself that someone is taking their time off to give me feed back by the way of their criticism,who on earth would do that?

Apart from my strenghts , working on the weakness was also critical , as Azim Premji says quite often. That made me polish myself .

Lastly i was open to ideas and changes. I had a very open mindset.Lastly when i had all these, it just looks like i was there at the right place at the right time.

The answer to my thought finally was hard work does pay,may be one might need to wait but if we are dedicated and are not greedy of others success but learn a trick or two from their success, well one can definitely achieve things in life .

Although i have exaggerated the contents in the blog a bit but the point that i wanted to drive home was "Hard Work and Open mind does pay you and it pays you big time".

As always open for comments!

Corporate Jungle and Performance Management

Its that time of the year every manager dreads. Yes,its the time for performance appraisals.

It's not about the performance itself or the whole process which is scary but the scale of expectations from staff is!

As is said always,every one thinks he/she is a super performer and every one thinks he/she deserves a solid rating at the end of the year.

What i find missing in people is acceptance that a year has not been great,he or she has not performed well . Managers are chastised for handing out poor rating, as if they got up from bed thinking X or Y should not be given good rating even if they have performed well.

Performance in my opinion is always relative and its true in an organization. Comparison has to happen on relative scale.If X has performed at a super status level with the same tools as Y has had , it is only fair to rate X higher than Y,even if Y is more experienced and senior in the role.

Expectations from people have soared,even in this economic climate that's not changed. That is what intrigues me quite a lot. When an organization is performing well , they need it to give promotions year after year and so is the case when the markets are tough. This is a sheer paradox or even a Pandora's box for me.

There are two things that i see are the problems. On the one hand not all managers are fair in their ratings , some times being in the boss's cabin or doing stuff for him/her do get things done.On the other hand people ,especially at lower levels also need to understand that not every year things remain the same and performance is relative. One more bigger head ache is that how well has the organization clarified what its goals are ,if this isn't done properly,it can be a real problem answering people at the end

Then comes the big daddy of statistics the bell-curve, i would not delve into it but this some times inhibits rewarding very good performers.

In a nutshell, organization,managers and employees need to do their bit to ensure a smooth and a transparent performance management.

The reason i called this post "Corporate Jungle" is because as in a jungle , even in a corporation only the best gets rewarded,not that average performers do not again its a question of relativity and matter what in economics is called "Bandwagon Effect" or "Network Externality" i.e. a person next to me has got a promotion or a solid rating so should "i",without thinking am i really worth it?

If people can ask themselves that question and reason it out , how much of a camaraderie would be there in organizations. Well its anybody's guess on how much better it would be.

How Much Do we Live for the Society!

I am writing this with an absolute fury in my mind. Am absolutely furious.

Just about half an hour back , i was witnessing how much our society drives what we do.

A cousin of mine had a love marriage three years ago.My family had cut all relationships with her.She had a complicated pregnancy and had a baby after battle with death.

The story unfolded today,when my cousin and her better half came to see her parents.

Rain was lashing today , my cousin and her husband had come today with the baby to get the blessings of the family. First they waited in front of her home. Not even one soul spoke to the couple and did not even call them into the house.

I just was a meek spectator trying hard to argue with my parents ,uncle and also eldest uncle,the head of the family about what was unfolding and what they were doing was incorrect.As a human we should show some courtesy was my argument.

I just could not understand why we do not forgive and why this much ego . Why don't elders understand we are in 21st century.I was shattered to hear that the reason my uncle did not want her daughter into her home is "What would the society say", i was stunned and pained to hear.

Not even my eldest uncle heeded to my pleas. How long do we intend to be driven by the society and live for the society.

I in no way am undermining the importance of the society but there are limits to every thing. What is the cost that we are paying!!!!

I am not giving up without a fight and am deeply hurt on what has happened .I am sure i am not a loner in this , sure many of you would have been a part of or witnessed a similar situation.