Not just Human Resources...

Imagine this: The venue : Acclaimed painter, MF Husain’s, bungalow in Bangalore, India. A beautiful large space with an inbuilt stage and surrounded by works of art that transform the space from the ordinary to the magical. The actors : The Tangents – the only all-women Playback theatre group in India The audience : 40 women from different walks of life – professionals toiling in the corporate world, doctors, engineers, race car drivers, artists, home makers, mothers and mothers-to-be, wives, sisters, teachers, friends… The subject of the play : Audience life stories – celebrating women The performance : The performance takes place in 3 segments. Fluids, stories and conflicts. Fluids are basically a dynamic tableau of audience responses enacted by the actors. Let me give you an example: The conductor (who is effectively a ‘sutradhar’) leads the audience to the theme of say – being a woman in the corporate environment and what the frustrations they feel at times. Wo

My brush with ‘the power of ambition’ – a personal experience This is a story of how ‘ambition’ transformed an ordinary business unit, stuck in the rut of its own limitations and its industry’s limitations into a powerhouse of achievement. Well.. let me start at the beginning. This particular business unit is the parent division of a large IT company, but it operates in the FMCG space. The FMCG market, especially personal care products, has been increasingly tough in the last few years. This unit was facing considerable de-growth and coping with low morale of its employees. Historically, things, for some reason tend to get worse, before they start to get better… and this division was probably at one of the lowest points in its existence. A leadership change brought in a fresh perspective, new dreams, and a big dose of ambition. Ambition and passion go hand-in-hand and are both equally contagious. The leadership team became the real pillars of change. I remember meeting this team

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 in a thatched hut with no electricity or running water in the village of Mvezo in the black homeland of Transkei. Rolihlahla means ‘troublemaker’. A teacher tacked on the name Nelson, perhaps thinking it less menacing. When he was 12, Mandela’s father died, and he left the family to become ward of the Paramount chief of the Tembu tribe. He attended a missionary college but was expelled when he joined a protest against efforts to weaken the student council. He left for Johannesburg and worked as a guard at a gold mine, then as a clerk in a white lawyers’ office, and studied for a correspondence law degree. He was 24 when he joined the African National Congress, a mild mannered organisation of old leaders, who sought to improve the treatment of blacks via constitutional means. But Mandela had other ideas, and his timing was right: A new, more impatient generation was waiting in the wings. Two years later, Mandela and a handful of friends created t

I have been wanting to write a book for a decade now. I had no idea what it was going to be about, but I knew I was going to do it… And then a year passed, and then 2 and soon a decade had gone by, and I hadn’t even started... Have you ever wondered why there are so many unfulfilled dreams in the world? Is it because we are afraid of what will happen if they actually come true? We dream… it is the child in us who has stars in his eyes… and suddenly we grow up and realism in its worst form takes over. ‘What if’ becomes our driving force? We become experts at giving ourselves reason as to why the dreams cannot be achieved. Why do some people chase their dreams and others not? Whether it is the Wright brothers and their dream of flying even though they were bicycle mechanics, or Gandhi’s dream of independence for India, or Mandela’s dream of the end of apartheid, or King’s dream of progressive civil rights, or Lance Armstrong’s dream of winning the Tour de France even after debilitating d

CRUCIBLES OF LEADERSHIP - Trial-by-Fire Growing up, Harry Truman never thought of himself as a leader, nor did anyone else. With “eyeglasses thick as the bottom of a coke bottle”, writes historian David McCullough, Truman couldn’t try out for school sports and mostly stayed at home, working the farm, reading, or playing the piano. Friends thought he was a sissy, and so did he. When he graduated high school, his family had run into hard times and he remained on the farm, the only president of the 20th century who never went to college. But the course of his life changed forever when, at the age of 33, he signed up for the Army to fight in World War 1. He was shipped off to France as the head of an artillery battery, and there for the first time in his life he was forced to lead men through moments of mortal danger. His initial test came on a rainy night in the Vosges mountains. The Germans has dropped an artillery barrage close by, and his troops, panicked that they were bei

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST TELL me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream ! — For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real ! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal ; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way ; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! Be a hero in the strife ! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! Let the dead Past bury its dead ! Act,— act in the living Present ! Heart within, and God o'erhead ! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on

The Invitation By Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, And if you dare to dream of meeting Your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool For love, for your dreams, For the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, If you have been opened by life's betrayals, Or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, Mine or your own, Without moving To hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, Mine or your own, If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes Without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human. I want to know if you can see beauty Even when it is

A small confession before I begin my sordid tale… I am a Human Resources professional, have been coaching managers on teaming, leadership, effective management and such else, since I can remember. So when I took on the mantle of a manager for a highly motivated, ambitious, driven and intelligent team of management graduates with experience ranging from 3-6 years, more than a few years back, I didn’t really categorise it as a crisis. And you know… sometimes we HR people believe that because we have read about it, it somehow must mean that we can DO it… Well… I began where most poor lost first time manager souls begin : i.e. by introspecting about our own managers. Native (or maybe naïve) intelligence tells us that if we can avoid the pitfalls of our previous managers and go with things that we desire in a manager , we should be ok. There is a sense of false security … till of course, you crash and burn! I’ve always wondered about the abundance of literature on the ‘boss-subordinate’ r

Leadership Series - a snapshot of defining works on leadership Lives of great men all remind us To make our lives sublime And leaving, leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time… Leadership has been an existential issue in the world right from its birth and will continue to be one till the end of the world. It’s a concept that is quite difficult to deconstruct. There are probably as many theories out there as the number of thought leaders. Each, in its own unique way, sounds plausible. However, there always seems to be a mysterious missing piece of the puzzle. Can’t really blame them, ‘coz in this context especially, the whole probably is more than the sum of its parts. The truth is probably still out there, shrouded in mystery. I would like to invite all of you also to post inspirational stories of leadership, whether your own, people you know, stories of courage or personal strife, stories of victory against the odds or simply stories that you have read and are inspired by.