The sparking passion, the powerful words, , the zeal, the ignited mind, the speed, the accuracy, the motivation, the comprehension, the honesty, the reach amidst students, the tejas in your eyes , the knowledge and wisdom rendered, the admiration, the reverential personality, the success mantra for many, the inspiration, my biggest blessing- to my guru -the guru of life! Wishing you a happy teacher’s day!
You have turned many complex situations simple, you have made me understand differences in the irrational and the rational, the vicious circles, the directing lines, the exponential growth, integrating people, the solution to every problem, with all these you have clearly explained me the value of numbers and the geometry of life! As I write this 50th post, I wish I get back to the square; to be in your classes and yet again learn the art of life.
Mr. Rajiv Kumar Luv, Mr.Vijayanand Joshi and Mr. Vivek Patki, the thrimoorthi’s who facilitated us to learn the art of Leadership by handling interesting sessions on: Self esteem, Goal setting, Team work, Time management, Communication and Managing ourselves. These are the six magic mantras which were dealt with a three sixty degree perspective in the Leadership training camp sponsored by NANI PALKHIWALA foundation in association with Forum of free enterprise at MOP Vaishnav College for Women Chennai.
The session started with a beautiful message:” If you want normal results, your performance should be good; if you want good results your performance should be excellent but if you expect excellent results your performance should be outstanding”. The bottom line is that the race to perfection has no finish line!
The sessions were packed with information, fun, activities, lots of interaction and above all their passion which was evident from every word which they shared! Not just these, they also asked us to keep a track of ourselves and write to them about our progress.
In this information era, we have time for everything else and not much for ourselves and these sessions rightly tapped the point and took us through a palette of activities and started with self introspection, creative thinking, networking skills and articulate communication.
Initially all the members sat with our known group but then we got divided into different groups and by this they explained us that a leader has to come out of his comfort zone. A leader is the one who feels comfortable in his state of discomfort. Each hall was now packed with strangers and we now had an icebreaker wherein each of us were given ten minutes to go around the hall and to befriend as many as possible and that initiated networking and soon the hall was teeming with familiar faces.
Here are some of the interesting activities for you – “In one minute how many dots can you make?” (I learnt a way to make 600 plus!!! And by dots I really mean dots! and now tell me how many dots can you make?”
There was also an exercise to write 25 good things about YOU and that gave us an opportunity to explore ourselves.
Here comes the next exercise wherein we were asked to write about our short, mid and long term goals and not just that, we drew them as well! That reminds me that I felt extremely motivated and charged when I was to sketch three people who inspired me the most! The prime focus of these thought provoking sessions were to make us realize the following:
Remember, a goal is a dream with a deadline; and the clock is ticking…
Ultimately the purpose of life is to LIVE, LEARN, LAUGH and leave a LEGACY!
One of the best show pieces has taken a piece of my heart and if you are not sure which then take a second look at the photo, for that piece can take away one of your heart beats too :-)
My darling cat Achomi and you can locate it doing the right thing at the right side lol
Don’t know if it has got inspired by me or I have got inspired by it, we both are sure to outwit kumbhakarna’s and pose a threat to the other kumbhakarni’s if any lol.
Whenever dad got things for home, we all encircled him like bees and probably over the days this has got achomi deprived of the attention that it had been enjoying earlier and hence one day achomi explored areas in and around our colony and found that it can also bring in a new thing to home (guess achomi thought getting new things was the cause of attention and it turned true too!). It has caught a rat alive and came running into the home, it seemed as if a child had won the first prize and flaunting it to dad. As it expected we were all shouting ‘achomi’ and guess it got happy as it ultimately got the privilege it demanded lol. We had a tough time with the tom and jerry though!
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”- Charles Darwin
Whenever I see an ad on television I wonder why people are constantly marketing the same product with different commercials. I had a notion that if the product is good then people would automatically purchase and use it and for this a couple of ads should suffice. Still why are they spending so much focusing in the marketing section? This question made me perplexed until recently.
Every product has its own life cycle and it generally consists of creation stage, growth stage, maturity stage and decline stage. The graph goes like a normal bell shaped curve. Thus every product has to face all the four phases. All the companies obviously want their products to be in growth stage forever. How is it possible to keep a product in its growth stage eternally or rather how to prevent the product not entering into the decline stage?
The graph here (will be updated soon) explains that a product can avert stepping into its decline stage by providing it with a new life! And that’s why you see that there are so many modifications done with the same product (Be it in its packaging, flavors, quantity, free gifts and the like)
For instance, lays chips has come out in multiple flavors to relentlessly have its space in the market, chocolates which has come in all possible sizes to fit the purse and similar is the case with shampoo industry which is packed in different volume to cater to the space need of the people.
In the service sector, let’s consider Airtel and Vodafone, each come out with different offers and packages to attract customers and to gain a competitive advantage of the other. Ultimately customer is the king and every product has to be deigned according to his needs! As the adage goes, change is the only thing constant!
Do contribute by switching off power supply for an hour on Saturday 28 March 2009, 8:30PM local time, wherever you live on planet earth. SAVE EARTH because it’s the only home we have!!! Hope this one hour of darkness will bring in more awareness! For more details visit and vote.
We had a very vibrant session with Dr.Nityanand Jayaram who is a journalist by profession and social activist by passion. Ignited the session by asking what is democracy? And he questions the relevance of Abraham Lincoln’s definition of democracy in today’s India. There was a silence and Mr.Nityanand vividly pointed out that this silence is one of the key signals that we are NOT living in a democracy! “We live in a democratic country but people don’t really know what democracy is! It sounds strange but it is the truth”, he adds.
According to Mr.Nithyanand, democracy is the rule of people! Every individual has a responsibility to change the country for the better and for this, one needs information. Information is a very important ingredient in a democracy. If you don’t have sufficient information then the law permits you to acquire information!
There are many of us who have applied for ration cards/passports/license/voter id and are just clueless about why we haven’t got it even months after the elapse of prescribed time! All Mr.Nityanand says is be informed and seek your right for the information. Right to information act, 2005 is an act which can turn tables if one uses it wisely!
RTI is an act that you, as a citizen, can use. When you ask for information the authorities can either provide or deny you the same by stating reasons within 30 days. If you know you are right and want to fight and win, the most important thing is to keep fighting. Remember a fight can be won as long as the fight is on! The fight for justice for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy is a classic example!
This link will provide you with more information. Be informed and be aware!
Mr.Ganesh Chella, the founder of Totus Consultancy (A HR solutions provider). Mr.Ganesh also writes in the Business Line every fortnight on key HR issues. Having read a few of his articles I somehow wanted to meet him and guess I was blessed! I was one of those who were fortunate enough to have an interactive session with him. Mr.Ganesh started the session very poised and continued in an assertive style. His highly encouraging and pragmatic approach made us glued to the session.
He started by giving the statistics of ILO report which reports that as a worst case the world will lose 51 million jobs by end of 2009 and as the best case it will lose 18 million jobs! He makes us vicariously analyze the situation and zeroed in on the key point that our focus should be on knowledge and NOT on job market!
Secondly, Mr.Ganesh provoked us to write on what kind of professionals we wanted to become by 2030. It made many of us streamline our goals and yes we did think of why we were to think that far (2030?, we have miles to go before that!) A few of us had an opportunity to voice their goals and then he explains-why 2030?
He tells us about Victor Franklin’s book “Man in search of meaning” where the author writes about people who could withstand the brutalities of Hitler’s concentration camp (Auschwitz). Mr.Ganesh asked us about a similarity that these people shared. He said that all of them had something significant to do in their lives! Mr.Ganesh strongly believed that if one has an incomplete yet significant duty to perform then that fire in him if self will make him move towards the goal!
In fact he gave us a simple thumb rule to be an expert in any field of your desire! A thumb rule which Beatles followed before their first grand performance, a thumb rule by which Bill gates worked and a thumb rule which made A.R.Rehman get his Oscars! Wondering what it is? Well, all one has to do is to put in 10,000 hours of unperturbed dedication and the 10,000 plus 1 th second one will gain a mastery over it!
Once one is clear with what he wants to be by 2030, he will work towards it. Are you willing to make great sacrifices to achieve your goals? Then every day ask yourself “what am I going to do today to get there” and break the dawn with this thought lingering in your mind. It’s your turn to pen your 2030 goal if you haven’t but do remember to START with the END in mind!
Mr.Kannan of Perfint Technology and Mr.Sunil Cherian from Burger Man enlightened and shared with us their experiences and challenges that they faced.
Mr.Kannan spoke about his team wherein each of them sacrificed a high paying job to start their entrepreneurship endeavor. Their initial step was supported by an Angel Investor.
He added that their organization is built on strong values of Performance, Integrity, Innovation, Customer focus and the time. Mr.Kannan also shared about his project experience and wanted everyone to take up their project seriously for it can make good careers! Further he said that there is an emerging market for health care and wanted to tap it.
Next Mr.Sunil started his speech with a video 'The Secret 'and added that it highly motivated him. According to Mr.Sunil, 'When you work for something, from nowhere the ideas will come and all you need to do is to grab it!'. He asks us to take every spark seriously for who knows it might be a million dollar idea!
"A small concept of 5 feet by 5 feet is the area of my business. It is 25 sq feet because I started thinking of the feasibility first. I wanted to be visible and dint mind starting small as far as I was making it big. I can sell anything! And even if you give me a dead body I will sell it", he asserts! He shared that a lot of money was initially lost in the business, added that he learnt from every mistake and the more the number of mistakes, the more he know his business.
When asked about the reason behind the name of 'Burgerman' he said, "A milk man brings us milk; a post man brings us post and likewise is the burger man! It's a kiosk and will remain the same. It’s affordable but not cheap. We don't say we make the best burgers, all we say is that we serve good burgers”.
During his short speech Mr.Sunil revealed why he chose entrepreneurship rather than carry on his family business. By the way, his family owns the Kerela Fashion Jewellery. He felt that he shouldnt be one among the many who got trapped into the world of family business and that he should make a mark for himself.
Both the entrepreneurs spoke with a lot of ardor and zeal. Though they are from different fields altogether their speech reflected their common passion for entrepreneurship and the vision to transform lives!
Entrepreneurship is easy to conceptualize but hard to explain. I would describe entrepreneurship as the process of incubating ideas, championing their cause, assemble resources to bring the idea to commercial reality and finally to launch it and see it grow. The word “entrepreneur” originates from a thirteenth-century French verb, entreprendre, meaning “to do something” or “to undertake.” An apt etymology!!
To me, entrepreneurship strikes as a ‘creative destruction’ of old ways of doing things and transforming the whole process of running a business. Increasingly this art of entrepreneurship is acquiring a green shade. But this comes as no surprise, as entrepreneurs who often play an important role as engines of change in market based economy are turning ‘green’ just like engines of automobiles which are trying to attain an image of being ‘environment friendly’.
Entrepreneurs play a critical role in eventual adaptation of green business practices by wider business community. The new age entrepreneurs innovate, design and launch new products and services which are eco friendly and also try to address the problems of global warming. This new breed of entrepreneurs also inspires, and in most cases, forces existing firms to improve their efficiency. They follow new methods of marketing and help reconfigure existing business models. This is an exciting area to be involved in. At its best, entrepreneurship is about harnessing the enthusiasm, initiative and creative energy of individuals. When this dynamism is applied to developing business solutions that help move enterprise along more sustainable ways, then the results will have the potential to be truly fascinating—and rewarding.
India’s has the world’s largest population of youngsters i.e. below the age of 35 estimated at about 500m+. Just imagine the benefits our country stands to gain even if a small percentage of youngsters decide to take the plunge and become ‘green’ entrepreneurs. Hope the dream becomes a reality.
Do you dream of leaving your thankless job, increasing your financial security, and your freedom? Do you wonder what the future will bring if you stay in the rut you are in now? Are you looking for more independence and a chance to own your own business? Want to improve your standard of living?
Then you are the perfect candidate to taste the spirit of entrepreneurship and most probably it is the way ahead for you.
There are many Indians who are ready to sacrifice anything for their passion! A passion to make a difference! NEN helps all the mushrooming novices to sprout. NEN was started by alumni of pioneer institutions in 2002 to help struggling entrepreneurs get a hold in their markets. NEN, since its inception has been a pillar of strength and providing support to all budding entrepreneurs.
Do you have an innovative idea? But are you worried about the funding of your venture? Well if you have a novel idea and a passion to work for it then NEN is the right place! They have a close network of Venture capitalists and angel investors to whom can put forth your ideas and if you are able to convince them with your ideas they will fund your venture! For more details visit NEN
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