Happy New Year!

Time flies so fast; it’s yet another year end and it gives lovely feeling if I reflect on how this year has been.


At national level; it’s incredible as how the entire nation has become more aware on the social issues like black-money, corruption and safety of individuals. It gives a clear message that the limit of tolerance has reached and this, in my opinion, is truly an amazing change in the social fabric of India. The evolution of social media as an instrument in bringing this change is worth noticing. The nationwide response to such issues makes me feel that India is changing and youth are becoming more decisive and expressive, which is a very good sign from political standpoint.

Another great thing is India’s performance in Olympics, which was best so far. With no visible support to sports and when the facilities are of not world class, the achievement done in the sports arena makes one feel proud. I am hopeful that this gives a lot of hope to the thousands of dreams which are being nourished some part of the country.

Politically this year saw many new and young leaders coming up in the country. Not many changes in the state heads, but good governance made the headlines. Though there were few low points in terms of series of ill-timed and ill-intentioned statements and barbaric acts of few individual.

Internationally we saw Obama re-electing as president of USA amidst the gloomy economy and uncertain future. The healthcare reforms of the western world are the new thing which is being seen by the entire world.

Rivalry on the technology ground has been elevated with Samsung and Apple fighting it out on smart phone and tablet market. Google and Microsoft saw different innovative products and Facebook being questioned on its business model.

News of Europe slipping in to recession (Or recession like) situation made most of the headlines this year. Though Nordic market evolving much better. Asia did a decent job with China leading in economic front. India saw new wave of reforms through series of new pushes from government though India Inc felt it’s not good enough.

IT and Automobile were growing from Indian economy perspective, with companies in these segments unleashing much bigger dreams of becoming more global. Real-estate was much stable (Low?).

Personally specking had much better year, with great growth in business, new paths of journey, much more agile and more sense of accomplishment. Got inspired by few individuals, felt great by reading few books, got enriched by just exploring or interacting with life. Took some steps which I never thought I would, explored many things which so far seemed as strange to me; finally no regrets. I am thankful to god for all has been provided to me in 2012.

A happy and prosperous new year 2013 to you and your families; may all your dreams come true.

One day cricket will not be same without him

After 22 years of glories years at field, Sachin has declared his retirement from one day cricket. His contribution to Indian cricket has been remarkable; in terms of making tons of runs, pulling out victories, making India look better on the field and more importantly carrying hopes of one billion+ people, year after year; whenever he went to bat.


A fitting career glorified with World Cup win and holding record for almost all aspects of the game; talks about Sachin and his contribution. He has all the qualities to be able to successful in the sports career; just to name few;

Desire to Dominate: He has such a strong mind that no matter what reputation the bowler might have; he wants to dominate. This was evident in many ways, the manner in which he went after bowlers and won matches for India. He raised his bar so high that if he gets out not scoring hundred; we started feeling he didn’t play at all. This desire along with his cricketing brain has put him on one of the great cricketers of the world. He could sense the situation of the game and adjust to that.

Ability to improvise: He has greatest ability to improve his skills, game after game, for many years. It is very common practice to see him practice for long times at nets and he would study the video tapes of the matches as how he got out and improve on that. This ability to learn made him so relevant even today as other talents have gone dusting. His discipline has been one of his trademarks; where he would come prepared with which bowler to attack, where to hit the bowl and what should be the chasing strategy. He adjusted to the playing conditions really well and changed his gear from fast scoring to anchor or visa-versa. He is said to be one of the players who would study the pitch early morning of the match day and do his own analysis of his opponents on this pitch conditions. How about his physical fitness level even after 22 years of international career?

Humility: The greatest asset we all can learn from him is his humility, staying simple and grounded. We have seen many players who could not able to manage the success. His near emotionless approach when he bats tell about his stability of mind. We can see a boy within him when he talks. Have you ever seen his responding to any media criticism?

There are many stories about his greatness and how he conducted his game all these years. Statistics say it all. Can we forget his desert storm of Sharja? Can we forget a little boy who picked up the ball from his caption and bowled that final over in Hero Cup? Can we forget his match saving innings?

Thanks Sachin, for carrying our hopes all these years, for making us to watch cricket, for making us feel if you are batting means India is in game still, for fulfilling our expectation from you, for being an Indian such that we can proudly say Sachin is from India.

Cricket will not be same without you; we will miss you.

What they don’t teach you at school

It’s rather obvious that the most important lessons of life cannot be learnt within the classrooms. It’s obvious that the life teaches you more than what you learnt during your school days. But the question I am asking is what our best of the schools doesn’t teach us?


I started thinking about these recently and I wish someone would have told me about these points back then!

Grades are not everything: Grades do not really matter, if it is 70.2% or 79.9% there is not much of difference. I was told, you need to get good grades to get a better company in placement; true. But most successful people of the class are not really the nerds. I wish; I could have understood this fact back then and taken my student life a bit relaxed, focused on complete personality building rather than just being tensed.

Ability to build Relationship: Corporate life or in general just the life is all about building or managing the relationships. With the new global village concept, one probably needs to build a global network and have a global perspective.

Power of Perspective: I think one should get some insights on how the world can be seen with different perspectives and why it’s important to have clear thought process about any matter of life. All successful people have a clear perspective of what is right and wrong in life. It’s also important to respect other perspective and how to balance. This is a great quality in corporate life.

Life is journey: Education is all about having a goal and figuring out how to get there, be its internal exam, or an entrance exam; we have cut-off and we want better numbers. But, today I realize life is a journey and is not a destination itself. The more we reciprocate with life, we learn from it.

Follow your heart: Heart is at your left but it’s always right. I wish I was told back than to follow your heart and do something which you truly, really love doing. I wish I was told to find something which interests me and start following that dream. Life is not all about the books, magazines, research papers or internal exams!

Money: One major goal of life while we were in college is to make money and more money. But, life’s satisfaction is somewhere else. Some colleagues, some different perspectives of people made me to realize, money will just follow if someone is capable enough. Money is a by-product but back then money was the only goal!

Global Perspective: How important to have this global perspective? About how people have evolved, what global history might teach us? What students in another country are doing research on? Or just, having a wide perspective about life?

To sum it up, I was just fighting for the placement process to get a ‘dream job’. But it looks like a mirage now. I might have done well in exam by memorizing few things or might not have understood anything in one of the subject; finally I got degree. What stayed with me is the confidence that I can solve any problem that comes my way.

And that is the ultimate gift of any education.

Need for Change

Everyone in corporate world has to go through constant changes, all the times. It could be change in profile, change in team members and sometimes change in complete set of environment (If you are changing the job)


The change I am talking about is the one which we need to go through all the life, irrespective of companies we work for, boss we report to, or colleagues we are surrounded with.

For example, let me assume that I am working as a team lead at some point of my career. Where I will be much involved in the details and completely hands on. My small module forms my world to me and I will probably want to make all the decisions related to this module.

Let us assume, I got promoted to project manager, where 5-6 team leads report to me. Now, I need to unlearn the way I was dealing with the work, and start thinking about the whole project. I need to understand that I can no more be completely hands-on to the work I am responsible for and I need to get the work done from others.

Cut few more years, I am a business leader now. This is a different ball game now. I need to have vision, and a plan to build a business. I need to have an operational blueprint and means of measuring the success of a project. I need to be an influential leader who can abstract the work from my team members, while connecting with my customers to provide value to them.

If I am a CEO of any company, I need to look my profile in to a completely different way.

I need to move from tactician to strategist: shift fluidly between the details and the larger picture, perceive important patterns in complex environments and anticipate and influence the reactions of key external players.

I need to move from being specialist to generalist: understand the business models, tools and terms used in key business functions and develop templates for evaluating the leaders of those functions.

I need to move from being supporting cast member to lead role: where I exhibit the right behavior as a role model for the organization and learn to communicate with and inspire large groups of people both directly and increasingly indirectly.

Imagine, if I fail to change my mindset as I move up in the organization? Imagine being involved in all the details like project manager when I am a CEO? It will create issues among the team members as they can’t understand the role I am playing and more importantly I need to spend time to strategize the things.

I have seen some examples where compromising this clarity led to complete breaking down of the business operation.

What The CEO Really Wants From You: Book Review

This book is a classic for young managers who need guidance and directions on how to charter a successful career


The author uses the frame work of “Four A’s” to describe the competency set and behaviors required of a successful manager. These A’s are Accomplishment, Affability, Advocacy and Authenticity. Briefly here is what he has to say of the four A’s.

Accomplishment: While this seems simple enough most managers make the mistake of thinking that all the doing is at the executive levels and their role is to be the thinkers. Coordinating and enabling execution is something that they miss out on. Also getting results needs influencing other interdependent departments which requires skills that a manager may not adequately possess.

Affability: Managers need to convince, cajole, coerce and even crucify people in the course of striving for results. It is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced to perfection. The affable manager knows how to disagree without being disagreeable; how to separate rivals views from his feelings or opinion about the rival and how to listen carefully with an open mind and yet be focused and single minded.

Advocacy: In the words of the author, “In the early stages of one’s career, you are the recipient of instructions and the effects of power. You accept them by adapting. You realize that the boss expects you to exercise your leadership on the people who report to you and make sure that things get done. In the middle management phase, you find the need to influence people without their directly reporting to you. In the senior and leadership roles, you may exercise no control over people you need to influence. This is the manner in which your skills of advocacy develop.

Authenticity: Once again in the words of the author “It is the perception of who you are and what you stand for that produces followership. Followership is used here not in a hierarchical sense but in an egalitarian sense. It is the voluntary desire or inclination among followers to follow a person, emotionally and physically.”

A must read