How To Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big

How To Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big

Scott Adams created a multimillion dollar empire. That empire is more commonly known as “Dilbert.”


If you’ve read Dilbert, you know Adams understands a great deal about human nature.

(Then again I probably relate more to Calvin and Hobbes than most of the western canon.)

His new book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, has a number of useful insights about life.

And what’s really fascinating is they line up with a lot of the research I’ve posted about before.

Here are 5 great life lessons he gives and the research I’ve posted that backs them up:Have A System, Not A Goal

This is such a powerful distinction. Losing 20lbs is a goal, eating right is a system. Which one do you think provides a better path to success?


…one should have a system instead of a goal. The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.
A system provides a method and requires activity on a regular basis. That’s how successful people operate.


For our purposes, let’s agree that goals are a reach-it-and-be-done situation, whereas a system is something you do on a regular basis with a reasonable expectation that doing so will get you to a better place in your life. Systems have no deadlines, and on any given day you probably can’t tell if they’re moving you in the right direction. My proposition is that if you study people who succeed, you will see that most of them follow systems, not goals…
Oliver Burkeman pointed out research that made a very similar distinction in my interview with him:

The best thing to do is to set process goals rather than outcome goals. Stop telling yourself you’re going to write the great American novel, and tell yourself you’re going to do 500 words a day. Step back from focusing on the outcome and focus on process.
Success Creates Passion More Than Passion Creates Success

Many people are passionate about things but don’t follow through. Passion is great — but it’s not everything.


…my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don’t want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He’s in business for the wrong reason. My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over thirty years, said the best loan customer is one who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet… Passionate people who fail don’t get a chance to offer their advice to the rest of us…
Dilbert didn’t start out as a passion project. Adams describes it as another get-rich-quick scheme he had.

But once it became successful he developed passion for it.


…Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success.
This sounds a lot like what Georgetown professor Cal Newport said in our interview:

I set out to research a simple question: How do people end up loving what they do? If you ask people, the most common answer you’ll get is, “They followed their passion.” So I went out and researched: “Is this true?” From what I found, “Follow your passion” is terrible advice… My advice is to abandon the passion mindset which asks “What does this job offer me? Am I happy with this job? Is it giving me everything I want?” Shift from that mindset to Steve Martin’s mindset, which is “What am I offering the world? How valuable am I? Am I really not that valuable? If I’m not that valuable, then I shouldn’t expect things in my working life. How can I get better?”
Focus On Energy, Not Time

Scott Adams determines what activities to engage in by his energy level. To be creative he needs peak energy, so he draws Dilbert in the morning.

By the afternoon, his brain is fuzzy. That’s a good time for busy work.


The way I approach the problem of multiple priorities is by focusing on just one main metric: my energy. I make choices that maximize my personal energy because that makes it easier to manage all of the other priorities.
One of the most important tricks for maximizing your productivity involves matching your mental state to the task… At 6: 00 A.M. I’m a creator, and by 2: 00 P.M. I’m a copier… It’s the perfect match of my energy level with a mindless task.
How can you do this if you’re not a rich and famous cartoonist? Wake up early to work on your own projects first.


Most people aren’t lucky enough to have a flexible schedule. I didn’t have one either for the first sixteen years of my corporate life. So I did the next best thing by going to bed early and getting up at 4: 00 A.M. to do my creative side projects. One of those projects became the sketches for Dilbert.
Sounds like my main takeaway from The Power of Full Engagement:

Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.

Fake It Until You Make It

How do you overcome shyness? Out and out acting.


I credit one of my college friends with teaching me the secret of overcoming shyness by imagining you are acting instead of interacting. And by that I mean literally acting. It turns out that a shy person can act like someone else more easily than he can act like himself. That makes some sense because shyness is caused by an internal feeling that you are not worthy to be in the conversation. Acting like someone else gets you out of that way of thinking. When I fake my way past my natural shyness, I like to imagine a specific confident person I know well.
And what are other tips to conversational expertise? Focus on making others feel good and act interested (even if you’re not.)


Your job as a conversationalist is to keep asking questions and keep looking for something you have in common with the stranger, or something that interests you enough to wade into the topic… The point of conversation is to make the other person feel good.
So how do you get a stranger to like you? It’s simple, actually. It starts by smiling and keeping your body language open. After that, just ask questions and listen as if you cared, all the while looking for common interests. Everyone likes to talk about his or her own life, and everyone appreciates a sympathetic listener. Eventually, if you discover some common interests, you’ll feel a connection without any effort.


Researchers told people to smile. What happened? They felt happier.


More than 26,000 people responded. All of the participants were randomly assigned to one of a handful of groups and asked to carry out various exercises designed to make them happier… When it came to increasing happiness, those altering their facial expressions came out on top of the class— powerful evidence that the As If principle can generate emotions outside the laboratory and that such feelings are long-lasting and powerful.
Increase Your Happy Thoughts Ratio

Good things happen to all of us all the time. But we often fail to keep them “top of mind” and to appreciate them.

Scott Adams recommends making an effort to increase the number of times you think about the positive things.


A simple trick you might try involves increasing your ratio of happy thoughts to disturbing thoughts.

This lines up perfectly with Seligman’s 3 blessings exercise — the most powerful happiness booster out there.

Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well…Writing about why the positive events in your life happened may seem awkward at first, but please stick with it for one week. It will get easier. The odds are that you will be less depressed, happier, and addicted to this exercise six months from now.

source : http://time.com/34081/how-to-fail-at-almost-everything-and-still-win-big/

Vintage Social Networking

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen hbr.org

Editor’s Note: When the members of the class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success.
The students seem highly aware of how the world has changed (as the sampling of views in this article shows). In the spring, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. Though Christensen’s thinking comes from his deep religious faith, we believe that these are strategies anyone can use. And so we asked him to share them with the readers of HBR. To learn more about Christensen’s work, visit his HBR Author Page.

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn’t—that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”
I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.
When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is...,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.
I’ve thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.
That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.
My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.
On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

The Class of 2010

As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions.

One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question—how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. I tell the students about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. In my mind’s eye I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilized, and demeaned. I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem—feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team. More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That’s unfortunate. Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.
I want students to leave my classroom knowing that.
Create a Strategy for Your Life
A theory that is helpful in answering the second question—How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?—concerns how strategy is defined and implemented. Its primary insight is that a company’s strategy is determined by the types of initiatives that management invests in. If a company’s resource allocation process is not managed masterfully, what emerges from it can be very different from what management intended. Because companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, companies shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.
Over the years I’ve watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I’ve seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them implemented that strategy. The reason? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.
It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that HBS draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives. I tell the students that HBS might be one of their last chances to reflect deeply on that question. If they think that they’ll have more time and energy to reflect later, they’re nuts, because life only gets more demanding: You take on a mortgage; you’re working 70 hours a week; you have a spouse and children.
For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.
Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, core competence, disruptive innovation, the four Ps, and the five forces.
My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isn’t the only thing that gives people direction. For example, one of my former students decided that his purpose was to bring honesty and economic prosperity to his country and to raise children who were as capably committed to this cause, and to each other, as he was. His purpose is focused on family and others—as mine is.

The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.
Allocate Your Resources
Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.
I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?
Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term perspective.
When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.
If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.
Create a Culture
There’s an important model in our class called the Tools of Cooperation, which basically says that being a visionary manager isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s one thing to see into the foggy future with acuity and chart the course corrections that the company must make. But it’s quite another to persuade employees who might not see the changes ahead to line up and work cooperatively to take the company in that new direction. Knowing what tools to wield to elicit the needed cooperation is a critical managerial skill.
The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions—the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use “power tools”—coercion, threats, punishment, and so on—to secure cooperation. Many companies start in this quadrant, which is why the founding executive team must play such an assertive role in defining what must be done and how. If employees’ ways of working together to address those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT’s Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision—which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.

In using this model to address the question, How can I be sure that my family becomes an enduring source of happiness?, my students quickly see that the simplest tools that parents can wield to elicit cooperation from children are power tools. But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point parents start wishing that they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture at home in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one another, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.
If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.
Avoid the “Marginal Costs” Mistake
We’re taught in finance and economics that in evaluating alternative investments, we should ignore sunk and fixed costs, and instead base decisions on the marginal costs and marginal revenues that each alternative entails. We learn in our course that this doctrine biases companies to leverage what they have put in place to succeed in the past, instead of guiding them to create the capabilities they’ll need in the future. If we knew the future would be exactly the same as the past, that approach would be fine. But if the future’s different—and it almost always is—then it’s the wrong thing to do.
This theory addresses the third question I discuss with my students—how to live a life of integrity (stay out of jail). Unconsciously, we often employ the marginal cost doctrine in our personal lives when we choose between right and wrong. A voice in our head says, “Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK.” The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems alluringly low. It suckers you in, and you don’t ever look at where that path ultimately is headed and at the full costs that the choice entails. Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.”
I’d like to share a story about how I came to understand the potential damage of “just this once” in my own life. I played on the Oxford University varsity basketball team. We worked our tails off and finished the season undefeated. The guys on the team were the best friends I’ve ever had in my life. We got to the British equivalent of the NCAA tournament—and made it to the final four. It turned out the championship game was scheduled to be played on a Sunday. I had made a personal commitment to God at age 16 that I would never play ball on Sunday. So I went to the coach and explained my problem. He was incredulous. My teammates were, too, because I was the starting center. Every one of the guys on the team came to me and said, “You’ve got to play. Can’t you break the rule just this one time?”
I’m a deeply religious man, so I went away and prayed about what I should do. I got a very clear feeling that I shouldn’t break my commitment—so I didn’t play in the championship game.
In many ways that was a small decision—involving one of several thousand Sundays in my life. In theory, surely I could have crossed over the line just that one time and then not done it again. But looking back on it, resisting the temptation whose logic was “In this extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK” has proven to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? My life has been one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that followed.
The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

Remember the Importance of Humility
I got this insight when I was asked to teach a class on humility at Harvard College. I asked all the students to describe the most humble person they knew. One characteristic of these humble people stood out: They had a high level of self-esteem. They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were. We also decided that humility was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others. Good behavior flows naturally from that kind of humility. For example, you would never steal from someone, because you respect that person too much. You’d never lie to someone, either.
It’s crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once you’ve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you’ll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited. Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself—and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too. When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.
Choose the Right Yardstick
This past year I was diagnosed with cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than I’d planned. Thankfully, it now looks as if I’ll be spared. But the experience has given me important insight into my life.
I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted this disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.
I think that’s the way it will work for us all. Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

 

 http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1

Believe These Laws...

1.Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee. 2.Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner. 3. Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act. 4.Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers. 4.Supermarket Law - As soon as you get in the smallest line, the cashier will have to call for help. 6.Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.   7.Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings. 8. Law of Close Encounters - The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with. 9. Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will. 10. Law of Biomechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach. 11.. Law of the Theater & Hockey Arena - At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk. 12. The Coffee Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold. 13.Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers. 14. Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jam sandwich landing face down on a floor, are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug. 15.Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about. 16.Brown's Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly. 17.Oliver's Law of Public Speaking - A closed mouth gathers no feet. 18.Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it. 19. Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better... But don't make an appointment, and you'll stay sick. This has been proven over and over when taking children to the pediatrician.

Forwarded by Gene Fett

Sparks : From Speech given at the orientation program for the new batch of MBA students Symbiosis, Pune, July 24, 2008 By Chetan Bhagat

Just getting better from current levels feels good.

Don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes – Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school, where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark – don’t take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said – don’t be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I’ve told you three things – reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don’t go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you. But it’s life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember – if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that’s where you want to be.

Disappointment’ s cousin is  Frustration, the second storm.  Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don’t know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to  a release. Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts, having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life – friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness – this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damm lucky by Indian standards. Let’s be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don’t. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don’t get literary praise. It’s ok. I don’t look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It’s ok. Don’t let unfairness kill your spark.

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is Isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I’ve told you the four thunderstorms – disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful  years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, your eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying – I come from the land of a billion sparks.

source :  http://www.chetanbhagat.com/other-works/speeches/spark/

From Small Things : How I learned that changing the world isn By Patricia Espino

I’m sure many great, powerful and rich people think about how they can make a difference in the world. There are so many big problems, and they require big solutions, right? Actually, sometimes little things can make a really big difference. I learned this lesson one day five years ago with my father, when I was just acting like myself – a nine-year-old kid. Papa came home late from work after 9 pm. He’s a businessman who works long hours, and on this day he looked even more tired and stressed than usual. His eyes were already half-closed from weariness. I, on the other hand, was completely hyper. I followed him to his bedroom, skipping and doing the “Walrus Dance,” which I had made up myself. This ridiculous routine involved twisting my arms and legs in opposite directions. Papa trudged up the stairs, slowly lifting his large feet one after the other. He seemed to fall deeper and deeper into exhaustion every step he took. I was afraid that I would have to start pushing him, so I stopped dancing and got ready for the worst. Fortunately, he made it to the bedroom on his own. Papa sat down on the bed and started removing his shoes and socks. “How was work?” I asked cheerfully. “Oh, it was OK,” he replied wearily. “It’s just that I’m so tired.” “Oh,” I said, a little uncertainly. “Oh, um . . . you want me to leave?” Papa gave me a tired smile that made me more comfortable, that told me I was “safe.” It made me feel like he wasn’t going to scold me, as he often did when he was tired and I was bothering him or fooling around in any way. His smile lit up his exhausted face. I smiled too, only a much bigger smile. Well, actually a gigantic toothy grin, as I often did during that “stage in my life,” as Mama called it. “No,” he said kindly, “of course I don’t want you to leave.” Secretly I rejoiced. If I was not supposed to go yet, then that probably meant I was going to have a later bedtime tonight. Yay! There was silence for a while. I’ve always felt uncomfortable when it was quiet, so I opened my mouth and started blabbing away at top speed about nothing in particular – nonsense, actually, like why Winnie the Pooh only wears a short red shirt, and why butterflies fly. I was saying all of this in the voice of Stitch, the trouble-making little alien from the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch. Papa always loved it when I did that, and he started laughing loudly now. By the time I had acted out half the movie, voicing out all the characters by myself, Papa was crying tears of mirth. “Stop . . . stop!” he begged, wiping his streaming eyes. “Oh . . . side-stitch . . . ouch, OUCH!” I was delighted that I had made my grumpy old Papa laugh so much. “Did you like it?” I asked excitedly. “Of course I did,” he said. “Did you know that whenever you make me, or Mama, or your brother laugh when we are tired, you make us feel a lot better, and less tired?” I shook my head, astonished that I could actually do a thing like that. Papa smiled down at me. “You do.” I treasured those two simple words, and I still hold on to them in my heart. Amazing, I thought. Just like that! There are a billion people out there thinking BIG, and all I ever did was use a tiny “talent” of mine, as I like to call it. By doing so, I changed the mood of my family, changed the way they looked at things, changed the way they thought of life. A small act like that, I realised, can actually change the world. So much can happen when we work, but so much more can happen when we work cheerfully. Just by cheering people up, we can help them care more for each other, help them do their work better, and help make this world a more pleasant place to live in. There would be more love, and that, as everyone should know, is the most important thing we need to have a pleasurable life. So why not start small? Drop that ugly frown, put on your best smile, go out into the cold, dark world and spread some light, warmth and love to those who need it. You will make a difference – just ask my Papa. Source : http://www.rdasia.com/from_small_things

The Relative Factor October 14, 2005

Vanitha Prem Kumar will retire in two months time. A fortnight back, I met her in Chennai and listened to her life-story. Born to a railway doctor in 1948 – she was the second in a family of six children. All was well until one day her father passed away all too suddenly. It left her mother is a state of shock and lingering sickness. All her siblings were receiving good education but her mother had decided that it was quite alright for her to stay home. After her pre-university, Vanitha became home bound. Her mother liked it that way – it helped her to stay close to at least one child who could take care of her. Vanitha, a devout Christian, felt that this was indeed God's way. She was happy being near her mother who felt that the "not-so-pretty" Vanitha could well wait until a good man came along to marry her - someday.Everything changed one day when her uncle, a manager with a Tata company in Kumardubi, came visiting. He threw a fit. How could all the other children get good education while one girl was singled out to stay home? He chastised Vanitha's mother and the lady promised to let Vanitha go out of the house. That was Vanitha's turning point. She stepped out and trained to become a telephone operator. Vanitha liked that kind of work because at home, when her father used to be a doctor, it was she who used to pick up the phone and even started liking the errand. One thing led to another. She saw an advertisement for a telephone operator's job and not knowing that it was from the Taj Hotels, applied for it. She was selected and trained as an "order taker" for three hundred rupees a month. Seeing her rapid progress, the amount was raised by another hundred and fifty after a month. She married a man she liked and raised her two children over the years. Today, her daughter is settled in the US, married to a software engineer and her son is in his final year in a local engineering college. Vanitha is looking forward to continuing her work even after she retires from the Taj Coromandel in Chennai. She attributes her life's joy to the career the Taj has helped her to build. It all started however, with the uncle from Kumardubi.Cut to MindTree. I was chatting with a group of young software engineers. We were discussing the kind of influence our immediate and sometimes, the extended family has on us. Many owe their career to well-informed counsel of a relative. But sometimes, they have a hugely damaging influence because they are either ill-informed or overtly possessive. One young engineer who comes from a small town in Kerala, born to retired government folks, had to give in to constant maternal cajoles to come closer home. The mother did not understand the difference between one Software Company and another. Neither did she know the difference between a job and a career. Another engineer from Delhi had this amazing story – whenever he meets his uncle, the gentleman has just one concern. One of his cousins has already gone abroad. Another cousin has changed "three jobs" in two years! What is wrong with him? Why is he still stuck with the same company for five long years? Is every thing alright? I dread to think of how many people destined to great things in life, get derailed because of pressure from what I have started calling the "Relative Factor". I think two things will help. One, we at the workplace, will have to do a better job of bringing young people to the workplace and exposing them to the myriad options. We have to do that at the level of high school students. It does not matter that many of these children may have nothing to do with our organizations or careers we currently offer. Two, we have to connect with their parents and more importantly, the uncles of India. To me, they seem to have got everyone covered in the penumbra of their influence.I feel wonderful for Vanitha who will do a hat-trick soon - making it to the President's Club of the Taj Group for the third time in a row for the work she has done. She wears the small medallions of recognition on the border of her saree as if she had won them at the Olympics! I feel saddened by the young engineer who left behind a great career with us in Bangalore to board a train to Cochin – a place that is closer to Thrissur where mother is waiting for him.Life is a snake and ladder game. Every time we make a choice, we also choose the consequences. That is the reason we need to be careful with the Relative Factor in our lives. It is better to make it informed and beneficial. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html subroto bagchi

Written on Sand October 7, 2005

As a small boy, I was always fascinated with sand. In places I grew up, sand was easy to find. By the river bed, at construction sites and by short-lived rivulets that ran like fiery rivers after a spell of rain, next to paddy fields. The sand bed designed by unseen, deft fingers stayed on till a cow's hoofs went over them. I could spend hours looking at the patterns or playing on the sand dumped at construction sites. Today, bang in the heart of India's Silicon Valley, the only time I see sand is on my way to work. I see the trucks carry sand to construction sites I can no more play at. But my mind goes back to my childhood and the sand trucks bring me the memories of Koraput in Orissa. As a three-year old, I used to watch the occasional truck, groups of young adivasi women called "Nani bais" perched on the back. They wore bright sarees up to their knees, tucked flowers of the forest on the well plaited hair and sang in chorus as the trucks moved past me. At work and singing! Sometimes, as dusk fell, I would see them return - this time walking past - the women always held each other at the waist and walked in a single row - the men behind and they would be inevitably laughing or singing in a hauntingly beautiful chorus. That's my first impression of people at work. Today, I do not see them when the sand truck moves past in the traffic of Bangalore. But I notice something very interesting. The trucks come loaded from the river bed many miles away - nobody perched on them. Then they stand in some parking site - waiting for a buyer. The sand they carry is neatly stacked and every few days, the pattern changes. Sometime, they are loaded and then neatly patted to look like a pyramid, sometime like a mountain, sometime in yet some other shape. It occurs to me that the men and women who load them, have a mundane task but they have fun doing it and use their creativity on the sand as they go about their job. Some days, when the gulmohar trees are in bloom - you can also see a twig or two of bright bloom inserted on the top of the sand with the spontaneity of a child at play. Very similar to what we have all done as children by the sea, after building a sand castle. Today, I saw something even more interesting - I saw a parked sand truck - the loaders had willfully etched the Nike swoosh sign on the entire body of the sand. I am sure this is not part of a Nike campaign, but there it was. Until a buyer will come by, take the truck and the load is dumped. The artist will not be around to see the signs gone but he or she does not care. The creator had fun at work. How many of us sing at work? How many of us put our own swoosh sign on the sands we load? It occurs to me that we have left the child behind somewhere as we have gone to school and college and donned our business suits. And we complain about the spirit of innovation and lack of creativity at the work place. What is innovation and creativity? Is it in the mind or is it in the output? Is it in many small things or is it in a big bang of a great idea that will change the world forever? Is it something that flows out of designated minds in a R&D lab or is it in the hand of the "Nani bai" who improvises by plucking the flame of the forest - tucking some of it in her plaited hair and hoisting some on the sand? Or is it in the jamming they do, composing on the fly because they have never known how to read music, never been trained in any formal way? Innovation and creativity is a state of being. It does not get taught in MBA classes. It shies away when simplicity is shorn and we seek sophistication. It is not what gets guided through reward and recognition mechanisms that companies seek to fervently put in place like a net cast over a sea that has no life below the waves. It is a flow, a spontaneity and a continuum. It is in the profound anonymity of the artist of the sand truck who I will never see - someone who is telling me the importance of trying doing something new and doing it differently while loading the sand truck of my life today. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html subroto bagchi

What will I be, what will I be? September 30, 2005

I see it in their faces when they report to work on the first day, after being selected from an engineering college or an MBA institute. I see spark and innocence and a desire to win the world, laced with a kind of confidence only youth has been granted. Then I look beneath the veneer. In to the recesses their minds and I swim with their thoughts. Below the exuberance and the self-confidence, I sense uncertainties – I sense worries about what lies ahead? Flash back 1976. In the post-graduate class at the Utkal University, at all of 18-years of age, it occurred to me that I was wasting my time. My father had retired. I was living off my brothers. It had been only a couple of months before, that I had graduated with a first-class honors degree and was eligible for a national scholarship -enough to pay the mess dues at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) - the place I had wanted to go to. But the scholarship got disbursed only twice a year and mess dues needed to be paid every month. I went to many banks, they would not listen. At that time, you did not get a loan to study humanities. So, instead of going to JNU, I took admission at the local University and I was not liking it. So, what did I do? I walked out of class and took the job of a lower division clerk in the Secretariat. It paid me Rs 305 a month and in the bureaucracy, I was senior only to the dhoti-clad, elderly peon. My job started as an intern with the "upper division clerk" - a very dignified man who looked like a teacher. I would reverentially call him "Khuntia Babu". He taught me to file letters - something taken with great seriousness in government departments. One day, I was given to draft a letter of regret on behalf of the Secretary - it ended up being so sophisticated that both Khuntia Babu and the Sectional Head Clerk who was called "Bada Babu" saw great risk and thereafter, I was given a very light load. Given a lot of free time, I found myself often dragged to mediate among warring senior clerks who would suddenly start a furious debate over subjects like whether Sanjay Gandhi was good for the country - the debate often led to verbal violence but like receding waves after a crash, they would head back to the brown piles on their respective desks. One day, the dhoti-clad, elderly peon who had a permanently glazed look invited me to a secret club on the roof of the Secretariat building where a chillum was being passed around among his fraternity. In my life, it was the most exclusive, 'invitation-only' club I have ever entered. I worked there for a year before the DCM Group selected me as a Management Trainee. In a sense, the job at the Secretariat had taught me to brace for what was coming my way at the seventh largest industrial house in India at that time. Management Trainees at DCM were considered to be God's special people. Except that, I got posted to the oldest textile mill run by the group. There, my induction started at the "time office". At the gate of the Mill, at the blast of the siren, thousands of workmen - some bare-feet, some semi-clad, would march in with their "attendance cards" in hand. The smell of bidi and sweat from hard working and tough talking workmen interspersed with the noise of the clerks with thick glasses sliding down the ridge of their noses. I was the odd man out. Cut to 2005. In my office in MindTree, today I peer down the screen of my laptop, my thoughts are atomized and satellite links move them as bits and bytes across the world. I begin my day looking into the eyes of twenty-something engineers. By mid-day, I have spoken to customers in different parts of the world. By afternoon - I have sat in review meetings and spoken at training programs. Finally, ending the day with dinner with a visiting IT delegation. I time travel and step into the mind of a young man of 1976 and search out the familiar images. I ask myself - did I know that things would happen the way they did? What way my first job is linked to where I am today? I don't know. In some explainable and mostly unexplainable ways, it is. Sometimes, instead of looking for that link, it is probably better to simply do an outstanding job of whatever one has on hand. The rest, falls into place. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html subroto bagchi

Letter from Nimesh Anand October 21, 2005

One of the interesting rewards of writing a column is the wide variety of mails I receive. Sometimes, they contain words of appreciation, sometimes criticism, and then there are mails from people seeking professional advice. I do not like offering advice because it is not possible to give good advice without involved discussion. Also, most people do not like to receive advice. What they seek to hear is an affirmation of their own conclusions. Against this backdrop of reluctance, when Nimesh Anand (not his real name) wrote to me a few days ago, insisting that we meet, I asked him to summarize his issues first. When his reply arrived, it made me sit up. In many ways, Nimesh Anand is going through a happy problem. He has two job offers at hand from comparable companies for middle management positions. An engineer by education, he has spent most of his life in the sales profession. He wants to know, which of the two offers should he choose? That brings us to a very basic question. What are his goals? If we know a person’s larger goals, making a decision becomes easier. Here is what he has to say about his goals - “...over the next two to three years, I want to get a part-time MBA from a decent school; spend a little more time with my family than I have been able to; position myself to earn in the $500,000 bracket or be able to live in India and earn a US salary.’’ Very commendable, even if very self-centered. I wrote back to him, asking him how old he was. The reply startled me. Nimesh Anand is all of 32-years-old! At 32, he has a burning desire to earn $500,000 a year. He wants a US compensation to be paid out in India. For this he wants to have the kind of job that lets him have “enough time’’ to do a part-time MBA, but from a “decent’’ school and he also wants to spend more time with the family. Where does the company fit into the overall scheme of things? We will worry about that later. First, a little mathematics. If Nimesh is given out half a million dollars in compensation, his total cost to company will be in the order of a million dollars. It is a simple rule of thumb. You add the office rental, the equipment, other overheads, his travel and related organisational expenses. In the service industry, we normally take the total cost of owning an individual as twice the compensation paid. Given that, what value must Nimesh add such that his company can service his half million ambition? What level of rain making capacity must he have? How would he sustain that level of rain making, year after year? I was baffled. I asked myself, what was I doing when I was 32? It was 1989. My salary was Rs 5,000 per month. Add to that, a twobedroom company-owned house. My job involved coordination between Wipro’s computer factory and the field, looking after debtors and the technical training function. A bit hotchpotch, you may say. But I woke up every morning and ran. I worked hard and looked around baffled at all the people around—they seemed to be infinitely smarter, more competent than me. Seeing them, I worked even harder and asked myself, what value was I adding to be worthy of their company? It’s not that I was a martyr with no material ambitions. I did have my fair share. But they were not the compass of my life. Nor were they my North Star.You may say that was 1989, 16 years ago! Okay, let’s pay Nimesh 16 times or even 32 times more than what I earned then. But his needs are working out to be 375 times than what I used to make! He has at least 30 more years to go before hanging up his boots. If today, he needs half a million, what will he need in each of the three decades ahead of him? His view of a professional career is clearly that of a slot machine. Would he sign up for the rules as well? If all the money he needs must be made before he turns forty, he may have to squeeze all the juice out of his marrow before he hits his prime. Then what? Leaders, who have reached the top in any industry, have done so by giving more to life than they have taken out of it. Their foremost aim at every stage in their career has been to create disproportionate value, for the system, before self. Material rewards have followed, some times quite below their expectations, and sometimes well beyond. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html subroto bagchi

Google Your Career October 28, 2005

Google was started by two geeky youngsters from Stanford University—its beginning is legendary. I heard it from a Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ram Shriram. Shriram had made his fortune working with start-ups like Junglee and Netscape. Thereafter, he decided to become an angel investor. On one of his visits to Stanford to catch up with Professor Jeff Ullman, he met the two Google co-founders. The professor told Shriram that he should be backing these two young men. Despite the existence of the concept of internet-based search engines, there was something unusual here. Shriram and Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun, were willing to listen to the professor and took out their cheque books. It was then that everyone realised that the two youngsters did not even have a company name, much less a bank account.On the spot, they thought of the name ‘Google’ and Shriram filled the ‘to payee’ column accordingly. The rest is history. Google became a great IPO success, is meeting profit projections and has already become a Wall Street darling. I like the way the company raised itself to industry leadership. I think it has huge lessons for working professionals who could take a leaf or two from the Google story to build their own careers.To begin with, Google built itself on a solid value proposition and took a uniquely differentiated position. It provided value to the world before demanding any value for itself. It served until the world became dependent on it. It created value by meeting the unstated needs of unseen customers. That is a sure way, though a more difficult one, to win. It did not fear incumbency. So what if there were established large players who could have eaten Google for breakfast? Finally, Google persevered. It wasn’t an overnight success story. These are elements that build memorable professional careers as well. But wait, I haven’t told you the real secret sauce of their success, yet.Google started as a search engine. You typed in keywords and it looked through millions of pages all over the world’s farflung servers and reported what matched your needs. As time went by, they tried to make the search process more intelligent, more intuitive. They did not stop with that. When millions of people came to them with their search queries, they added the now famous ‘gmail’ to their basket of products — virtually unlimited storage, with no need to delete anything, more intuitive organisation of all your communication needs. What next at Google? I meet analysts who tell me that the next great wave of computing could come in the form of ‘service on demand’ from Google. You want to process your payroll? You want to print invoices and file tax returns? You want to manage your inventory? You will probably just go to Google and use any of these applications for a fraction of what it costs to own a software that does these sorts of things today. This may or may not turn out to be the state of the future. But, what is undeniable is the fact that Google will remain a force to contend with in the days ahead.Now think of your career and mine. If we can be compared to Google, the question becomes, what new value have you and I added of late? I meet many folks who started out in sales, and have grown up over time to manage larger territories and bigger accounts. I meet engineers who started in production or information systems or planning, and kept growing in a linear manner ‘managing’ essentially more of the same as years went by. Will this model work in the future? The answer is a short ‘no’.We may all choose to become a generalist, a specialist, remain an individual professional contributor, be a manager or a leader or whatever else we want. But in any of those, one must be sure to question periodically, "What new service offering do I have to offer to the world around me? Do I deliver it after someone has asked for it or am I pre-investing in building the capability?'' Just as Google needs to create new value for its users constantly, as professionals, we can't just be the best search engine and stay put. People who just continue to deliver the same good old stuff, cease to be interesting to the world around them after a while.I like people to look at their careers as five-year spans. Every five-year span is usually populated by two major assignments. Usually, we think of these assignments in terms of roles, job-descriptions, responsibilities, span of control, location and of course, compensation. It is time to take a leaf out of Google’s book. We need, periodically, to do a Google to our careers to create unusual new value and stay the favourite. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html

The Power of Mentoring November 4, 2005

In Bengali households, the eldest brother is often called “Dadamoni’’. I was eight years old when I came under the tutelage of Dadamoni, my eldest brother, D P Bagchi. He is 14 years older than I am, and at that time, was teaching at the local university. I came to live with him in Bhubaneswar from a small place that had no schools in the vicinity. While waiting to be admitted to school in the campus at Vani Vihar, I had no work on hand. I guess being both uneducated and unemployed at eight has its special circumstances. So, at times, I would sneak out of the house to hang around at the university, often eavesdropping on post-graduate classrooms.On one such occasion, I was outside a classroom where he was teaching and was caught. Instead of punishing me, he asked me if I understood what he was teaching. I sheepishly explained the theory of demand and supply that he was teaching to his class. He was so impressed with me that, instead of discounting me as a child, he started explaining the theory in greater detail. Thereafter, he started telling me about many other theories, like the law of marginal utility. One day, the Chancellor’s Cup Debate was held, and he asked me to come along with the condition that I promised to sit quietly at the back. There, I was thoroughly impressed by the young men and women who came up to the podium to debate the motion. I did not understand a word they said, but the process was spellbinding. I told myself that, someday, I had to do this kind of stuff. After a year there, Dadamoni joined the IAS. In due time, he was posted as an assistant collector in a sub-division called Keonjhar in Orissa. There, as he was trained in various aspects of district administration from doing land settlement in villages to declaring Section-144 in disturbed areas during a student strike he would treat me like an adult, teaching me all about the IPC and the CrPC, and explaining to me the intricacies of the revenue administration and discuss issues of development. Once the Hungarian ambassador visited an iron-ore mine in Dadamoni’s sub-division and he had to play host. He took me along to meet him. On the way, he explained the concept of protocol and coached me to address the ambassador as “Your Excellency.’’ I couldn’t wait for the visitor to ask me a question, to show off that I knew how to address him correctly even though I was a small boy in shorts. Dadamoni also taught me to recite Rabindranath Tagore’s timeless verse ‘Where the mind is without fear’. It came in handy for me because I shifted school every other year and, whichever new school I went to, the fact that I could recite an English poem of that sort earned me acceptance in the eyes of my new teachers and peers, who spoke little English themselves. Strangely, most workplaces have not heard about the concept of mentoring yet. In some, it is seen as a so-called “HR’’ initiative thereby driving it down to the lowest common denominator. In this context, my meeting with a young software engineer, Sriram becomes fascinating. Sriram quit his job to start a mentoring programme called “NalandaWay’’ in Chennai. The initiative impacts more than 220 promising children living in slums. NalandaWay locates such children by going around, meeting their parents and teachers. These children are then paired with successful people in the corporate sector. In the small time that the initiative has been around, it has become massively successful. The internationally renowned Ashoka organisation has adopted it as one of its “social entrepreneurship’’ programmes. Sometime ago, we got the folks from NalandaWay to talk to our leaders on what it takes to mentor young children. The idea was to learn the process so that we could introduce it to our own people. As my mentor, Dadamoni had a Pygmalion effect in shaping my personality and destiny. Education gives us some knowledge but good mentoring gives us the ability to relate it to the real world; it helps us to learn life-skills and moulds our attitude. The self-confidence that it can generate is so huge, it is almost magical. The principles of mentoring the child that was me, a teenage girl in a fishing village of Chennai and a budding young white-collar worker are not different. They all begin with the magical sensation of a grown-up reaching out to hold a soft, unformed hand and whispering, “Yes, you can!’’ This is when dreams are created and bridges built across to the realm of the possible. Where would I be today, without you Dadamoni? Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html

Fake Encounters November 11, 2005

The Times of India’s Bangalore edition had it on its front page a few days ago—Intel’s India operations had asked some of its people to leave for forging their leave travel allowance (LTA) claims. Intel refused to furnish details except that it affirmed its standards of integrity were sacrosanct. I can well presume what would have happened there. A few people would have made a seemingly innocent conclusion that if an employee fudged an LTA claim to deny the Income Tax department their dues, as long as such an act did not hurt the company’s cash flow or bottomline, there was nothing wrong with it. We all know when the concept of LTA as a tax-exempt perk came up, in New Delhi travel agents sprang up. For a small fee, they gave people fake receipts for travel not undertaken with which they could submit a claim. It is quite commonplace in some organizations for someone to claim airfare while they travel by train. What’s wrong with that? After all, some politicians and film stars, cricketers and businessmen and bureaucrats routinely falsify their income tax returns to save on taxes? Well, companies like Intel do not agree with that reasoning. To them, both the means and the ends must be justified when it comes to workplace ethics. Cut to MindTree. A young engineer applied for a job with us. He had a passable degree in engineering. But, he cleared our difficult-to-get-through entry test and started his work in right earnest. We found him to be as good as any other in the organization. Then the worst happened. When his past employment history was checked, it turned out that he had forged the salary certificate to show that the last salary drawn was Rs 20,000 a month whereas his real salary was Rs 9,000 per month. In reality, he did not have to do this because our salary fitment does not depend on it. We look at education, the skill and our internal equity and then decide the compensation based on a competence grid. We fired the man. This isn’t an isolated case. Last year, in MindTree alone, we had a dozen cases where people were asked to leave after a month or two of joining when employment verification raised traces of forgery. I understand that in larger Indian companies where intake is significantly more, the size of the problem is even greater. But if found out, the consequences are as severe. The question is, to what good use? Why do people do things that bring them humiliation? Well, in the first place, no one told them that it was wrong. The truth is that a new breed of Indian companies are here who place value on integrity compared to the past. In addition, thanks to globalization, we are seeing companies like Intel coming to India who make no compromise on the seemingly small violation of workplace ethics. Amartya Sen has called us an ‘argumentative nation’. On matters of workplace ethics, we can have particularly long arguments on what is right and what is wrong, who truly is at fault and dwell on the quantum of punishment. After all, should all these people have been warned and let off as against being shown the door? The truth is that companies like Accenture, IBM, Intel, Infosys, MindTree or Wipro and many others have no appetite for such discussion. Matters of integrity to them are always a black or white issue. The human eye is trained to distinguish between 108 shades of grey. The moment one gets sucked into analyzing the many different shades of grey, it becomes unending. So, to these organizations, white is white and black is black. You either play by the book or, you opt to stay out. It’s that simple. So, the next time your nephew asks you to arrange for a fake experience certificate, tell him it is not a good idea. If someone tells you that no one would notice if you claimed first class train fare but travelled by bus do not submit a false claim. If someone says, “but, everyone here does it,’’ ask yourself, how comfortable would you be to explain your conduct to your own child if she ever asked you if what you did was the right thing? The concept of workplace integrity is going to grow in importance. However, it is not about policing people’s behavior. It is about making conscious choices based on conviction about what is fair, transparent and above potential scrutiny. It is about closing one’s own eyes in a dark room and listening to the voice of conscience. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html

The survivor November 18, 2005

We live in difficult times. As people who are born of tradition, we are more comfortable when someone is always there to show us the path. It makes us comfortable because there is the power of wisdom and sage counsel. Sometimes, it also deflects our burden of responsibility to make our own decisions. Whatever the reason, we learn to look up to people. We look up to parents, we look up to teachers at school, the boss at work, role models in the society, we look up to the government itself and, finally, to people who are intermediaries between us and God. Sometimes, some of them fail us. We have learnt to take that in our stride. What makes ours a particularly difficult time is that we are seeing many of them failing at the same time.Government after government has shown its soft underbelly from personal conduct of people in power to its inability to protect the innocent citizen in times of distress. A serving president of the US misused the Oval Office, lied under oath and was allowed to stay in office. That became a lesser issue and we all moved on from it the day 9/11 happened. The world’s most powerful government stood helpless while the lives of ordinary people were buried under crumbling concrete.So the next time another terrorist group bombs a crowded railway platform, will you still believe that there is a government that it can protect you? Chances are, if someone really wants to get you, he will. GoogleEarth will show where you are right this moment even as the stewardess on a plane says, “Aerial photography is not permitted as per government regulations.’’ So, why on earth should I pay my taxes honestly to a government that cannot stand by me when I need it most? We want to seek solace from our religious faith. We want to be healed by the keepers of the faith the Father, the Imam, the Guru. There, we hear about the stories of child molestation in the Roman Catholic Church to stories of greed and murder in the shadow of a Shankaracharya.Not enough. Sometimes, a role model in the family, often an admired parent, crosses marital lines, or is discovered by a child to be taking bribes, or has became an alcoholic, or has changed beyond recognition after raising you on a staple diet of idealism. It leaves us at crossroads. Some of us feel devastated. Some take it as the signal and the justification to match the conduct or the failing."If the whole world is this way, why not I?'' Sometimes, we are fortunate enough to be able to make sense of what is going on to make our own choices. Each one of us is an intelligent, independent being. What the environment around us does is mostly beyond our control. What we decide to deduce and act upon is a function of the choices we make. When I do not exercise that choice, I abandon my right to assert myself. Let me paint you two scenarios. Both real.One of the nicest persons I have known in my professional life was sexually abused by a parent. It is probably the greatest humiliation one can carry on one’s shoulders through life. Yet, that abused individual is a great co-worker, a very giving spouse and a loving parent in real life. The past and the present may be overwhelmingly difficult; the future is what that individual has chosen to be all about.In New Delhi, a serving General has been asked to leave after selling regulation alcohol in the black market. I am sure he did not really need that extra money. Basic needs could not have driven him to do such things. In any case, his basic needs cannot have been greater than that of the 19-year-old boy from the heartland who stands in Siachen snow for months on end, under the shadow of a glacier, gun in hand and only fire in his belly. What if that soldier decided to take a nap? After all, if the General can be a bootlegger, what is wrong with a short nap in the line of control?The choices made by a sexually abused co-worker and the one sentinel in the line of fire makes our world go around. The Upanishad says: “You are what your deep driving desire is As is your desire, so is your will As is your will, so is your act As is your act, so is your Destiny.’’ In the turbulent world around us when role models fail, we have to make our own choices. When we do so, we realise it is not as difficult as we sometimes think it to be. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html

Start your own November 25, 2005

David Thomas will turn 40 on Friday. He is smart, competent and devoted to his organisation. A graduate from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology, he went on to get an MBA from one of the best management schools before starting his career with a leading Indian company. Somewhere during his career, he felt that he should be working for a multinational company, partly because of the lure of higher compensation, but also he was succumbing to the pervasive Indian mindset that working for an MNC is the more prestigious thing to do. Sometimes an aunt or an uncle does not quite know the name of the company you work for, nor can they explain what you do. Yet, just the smug words ‘works in an MNC’ conveys that you are doing alright. That was then.Today, as he looks at the next 20 years of his life, David feels deeply troubled. He feels that he has levelled out. The work that he performed so well just a few years ago is no longer as consequential to the organisation. There is something in the air that tells him that his career is festooned with autumn colours. Too many organisational changes confuse him. How can he create a long-term career plan for himself ? How will he get that plan nested in the larger landscape of the huge organisation? Something in him tells him to be bitter with the system for his present situation. At the same time, he knows that bitterness is not going to solve anything. He is at crossroads. A simple change of jobs will not magically take him back to the time when he was 23 and his next 20 years looked inviting. What can David Thomas do today?He has an option. Unfortunately, no one is telling him about it. That option is to start his own, to become an entrepreneur. Here is why: Entrepreneurs create jobs. Jobs provide people with livelihoods. Without a livelihood, everyone feels lost. Given a good livelihood, we all feel secure and able to raise families; we have the comfort of exploring higher callings; we are able to provide emotional security to people around us.There is an estimated 6.5 billion people on earth. Out of these, a third live right here in India and China. In the Indian sub-continent alone, there are 450 million children below the age of 15 who will need to join the workforce very soon. It is neither for the government, nor for large businesses to create avenues for employment and growth for these people. It can only be done by entrepreneurs.Entrepreneurs drive innovation. Seldom does innovation come from very large, very established players. The reason is simple. Innovation disrupts the established way of doing things. Large, profitable organisations frown at disruptions of any kind. For innovative people like David Thomas, it is sometimes easier to start something ground-up than trying to change the existing behemoth.Entrepreneurs create great wealth not just for themselves, but for others as well. They also use the power of wealth, sometimes, to build sustained legacy for society at large. Behind the educational system of the US is a huge amount of personal wealth donated by entrepreneurs. Without their support, some of the greatest initiatives to protect heritage, arts and literature and the environment would be difficult.Entrepreneurship can be deeply rewarding. The richness of experience and sheer self-confidence you get by starting a small shop is sometimes larger than running a huge department for an established entity. This is because entrepreneurship is the most handson thing you will ever do. Nothing about entrepreneurship is a spectator sport. Many things in a well-paid job in a large organisation could well be. Entrepreneurship is a creative process. When done successfully, it can give you the highest sense of accomplishment possible. That sense of accomplishment is next only to delivering and raising your baby.Finally, the world has become an entrepreneur-friendly place like never before. No government in the world says, “We do not like entrepreneurs.’’ Funding for new ventures is becoming increasingly cross-border. Also, today, more resources are chasing fewer ideas, rather than the other way round.Well then, David Thomas, probably the time has come to shed your sense of being at crossroads. Consider breaking free to start on your own. It could well bring back the sheer feeling of exhilaration when your first appointment letter was delivered in your youthful hands, a good 17 years back! Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html