MyTake

[picture credit: https://d3ttu1mwmobba5(dot)cloudfront(dot)net/content/uploads/2015/01/Question-Marks-Confusion-puzzle(dot)jpg] Many of my students keep asking me - 'How can we improve ourselves; how can we lead in our career; how can we communicate better' . I have grown with similar such questions and found the answer from within. I am sure many of the students pursuing studies and looking for opportunities, many of them in the first phase of their employment and many who toil hard to grow with the organization, might be facing similar such questions. For all of them this small piece might be helpful. I keep telling the students – ‘You need to concentrate on 4 Cs, viz., Communication, Content, Clarity and Confidence.’ And then we get into some conversation about all these 4 Cs in detail. I have experimented with many of my students over the years. In around three decades of my career and around a decade of growing in school, college and university, I have lived with...

One of my students' Facebook status read:  Its often said that nothing fails like success. But I believe nothing is as permanent as failure. Once it gets inside you, it stays there for quite a long time and in this process it destroys everything. I am sure many of us, especially when we pass through the age he is passing, tend to feel this way. Many times we don’t share it with others. Once I saw this post I responded quickly (well within 6 hrs): It depends on the frequency of its occurrence... And one's attitude... Positive people take lesson from that and move forward with caution, care and commitment... Negative people curse it and kill their efforts, enthusiasm and energy. Ultimately choice is with the individual... One must not handover his/her remote to others be it individuals or objects. It did not just end there. It took me back to my own experiences and interactions. It drove me to the lessons that I learnt all the while. It has been really interesting when...

B USINESS operates on the basic premise of interdependence between enterprise and society.  Their isolation kills the very foundational spirit of business. State plays a role of facilitator in order to assure that the interdependence is well respected and maintained.  Even when we follow laissez faire or operate in free trade environment, exploitation of users of products and services has to be monitored and controlled.  Irrespective of model of development and geographies of operation, this has been the hallmark in sustaining business growth and building great enterprises. At individual level, well-being is a state in which a person feels good about one’s life.  It is a reflection on past experience observed through satisfaction, on having good conditions of life at present and having positive outlook towards future. At larger level, human well-being reflects on general satisfaction of all individuals with their health, education, relationships, environment, ...

ORGANIZATIONS strive for better firm performance. In competitive environment it becomes a greater challenge to compete with their previous performance viz-a-viz the performance of the rivals. In all these efforts employees play key role. Employees work in organizations to achieve their individual goals.    They put efforts to attain organizational objectives and goals which indirectly helps them achieve their goals. This healthy and complementary relationship keeps adding value to the organizational efforts and achievements. The prominence of human relations school has proven that satisfied and happy employees would be more productive and result oriented. However many times organizations have focused more on customers and clients than employees which has its own wells and ills. But for visioning sustainable competitive advantage and to be a successful player in the long run, organizations have to start believing in prioritizing the focus on employees rather than customers. ...

माँ लक्ष्मी के दर्शन हुए। साक्षात गुलाबी रंग में। लगभग ७० मिनट सपत्नी कतार में प्रतीक्षा के बाद। अनुभूति ऐसी कि मानो क्या पा लिया हो, एक अनूठी उपलव्धि की तरह। मेरी स्मरण शक्ति ने मुझसे कुछ कहा, पिछली बार कब इस प्रकार कतार में खडे हुए थे। उत्तर मिला, माँ कामख्या देवी के दर्शन के समय, लगभग दो, ढाई वर्ष पूर्व। वह भी अविस्मरनीय अनुभव था, क्योंकि दशमी का दिन था, किसी प्रकार का प्रवेश शुल्क नहीं था और विशेषतः कोई वीआईपी दर्शन की कतार अलग नहीं थी। सभी को लाइन में खड़े होना था। कभी कभी भगवान के मंदिर में भी दर्शन हेतु समानता का भाव देखकर अच्छा लगता है। साल में कुछ दिन के लिए ही सही, कम से कम इतनी संवेदना अभी जीवित तो है। अर्थशास्त्र व राजनीतिशास्त्र की घनिष्ठता जग जाहिर रही है। कौटिल्य के अर्थशास्त्र से लेकर ऐडम स्मिथ के अर्थशास्त्र तक राजा, प्रजा, व नीति के परिप्रेक्ष में अर्थ की महत्वा हमेशा केन्द्र-बिंदु रही है। शासक, शासन व शोषण नीतिशास्त्र का अभिन्न अंग रहा है। शासन की क्षमता व्यक्ति विशेष के ज्ञान, पराक्रम व साहस से अधिक धन-बल पर निर्भर रही है। इसी कारण शासक की शक्ति उसके पास संचित लक...

During the monsoon of 2005, I was in Hongkong for an international seminar on Happiness and Public Policy at Lignan University. One of the evenings while we visited IFC mall, a big board displayed in one of the lobbies of the mall caught my attention which read as - Whoever said money can’t buy you happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping. It seemed as if shopping made people happy provided one had money to spend. Elizabeth Dunn of University of British Columbia suggested through research that spending money on others makes us happier than spending for ourselves and further it is the experiences that we pay for adds to our happiness much more than the material things that we buy. Investing in others makes us feel happier and healthier even when it might make us poorer by few bucks. Seminal contribution of Richard Easterlin (Easterlin Paradox) help us understand the relationship between money and happiness much better. Increase in incomes (at national level) does not ...

The future has always been there. Today shall be past tomorrow and history shall determine the future. So the future can never be isolated with the past or present. Future is here and we are deliberating on the nature of the future and the expectations of today's generation for staying alive, relevant and sustain in changing and challenging times. Yes the future is going to be different than the present as it has always been. The only thing which is important in this context is - whether we are prepared to face the future or are we putting efforts to develop systems, structures and styles that would successfully deal with future. Do we need to be effective or efficient in order to perform at the front to face the challenge or we can afford to allow the mighty to fall. The trend shows that the future is going to be more technology driven and the speed shall decide the future of an organisation. Economies of speed shall spearhead organizational performance. Artificial Intelli...