Making people dance to your tunes with no one knowing you are behind it, is truly fun. Performance of the team is what counts while the director has the full part in failure of the same! Dream and get it done! Refreshing management training – at leisure!

Leisure is time for doing
something useful; this
leisure the diligent man
will obtain, but the lazy
man never!
~ Benjamin Franklin

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Don’t waste time learning
the “tricks of the trade”.
Instead, learn the trade!

Best advice for all those bystanders who are perennially trying to learn something thoroughly before plunging into it! It is true that education doesn’t stop because you got a degree. Or because you didn’t.

Known fact is that we’re all learning as we go, and anyone who wants to make themselves marketable and successful will look for ways of consolidating that learning into skills or qualifications that are recognizable and understandable to others!

If you have a skill that others want, then you have a solid foundation of your own on which to build your career. But when it comes to unbounded professions like that of a consultant, a strategist or a trade that provides services to someone else and on someone else’s product or service, the skill and its relevance changes almost real-time!

Continuous learning on-the-job is the best option to remain relevant and contribute significantly. Wasting time to learn offline, every trick of the new trade is like wasting the opportunity.

This happens with most technical people in the current generation of IT world where we will find many folks with over two decades of experience covering over 20 different technology/ projects!

Quick test for our habits comes through this:

When you have two doors open – one to enter the fantasy land you have been dreaming all along and the other to pickup the book that describes everything about this fantasy land, which one do you take instantly?
~

This question came-up again and again while everyone in the room at a great industry summit wondered today, why have we done so well in one field and failing to take the plunge at the other very similar, attractive & compelling one? Why do we hesitate to apply the learning from one to the another, every time?

Great Poets try and find answers to fundamental questions by observing nature, interpreting patterns of life and applying that to own lives… They leave us treasure lines to see through that vision…

Reminded of these lines -

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;–on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life’s business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
~ William Wordsworth

So simple yet powerful, only if we wish to see and embrace the challenge….to go out and try!
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Yes! If time and money were not an issue, what would I do with my life? I know, I will not be quitting my job, for sure! Then, what would I do?

I have been testing this one with quite a few accomplished dreamer doers in the crowd. Of the 357 people I have spoken on this so far, I am yet to get a repeated answer! Everyone has an unique purpose!

May be that’s the beauty of this world – filled with endless abundance! Success and abundance for one does not create scarcity for others!

Finding a genuine answer to this question seems to lead us to finding our true purpose of life. As luck would have it, found mine today!

What about you?

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Product idea is great – that’s what the awards from 5 leading institutions seem to highlight. They have distributors lined up with cash deposited in the bank. Customers are calling in every other day enquiring when they can see the product in action. There is a competition amongst 3 VCs to fund/participate.

What is the issue?

It took us about 15 mins to realize that the problem was with the promoters! They had decided to experiment a product idea and embarked on an attempt to realize a vaguely formed entrepreneurship journey. They had everything but the zeal to go the entire mile.

One of them felt that it is too much of commitment. Another believes that they should only create a product and let someone else take and run with it. Remaining founder feels that they should call it quits as their experiment is over! Unbelievable. But True!

It was the classic case of blundering into an undertaking out of a vague sense of desire/ duty, nagging, or peer pressure, only to realize part way through that it is not within our scope, talents, or time!

Embarking on a journey requires preparation and commitment to complete it. Entrepreneurship is a journey that creates its own dependency, expectations and impact for the people who come in various forms – employees, customers, market, etc…

“Never stop till things are done” is a good motivator. But, “don’t start the journey if the job on hand is not worthwhile or doable” is the first part – known only to successful leaders/ entrepreneurs!

Best strategy is as Sun Tzu suggests:

The leader of an army acts
like one who has climbed up
a height and then kicks away
the ladder behind him.

Think twice, may be thrice before you start. Once you are on the walk, remember there is no exit path! That’s how winners run their lives!

If you are a leader, don’t forget to kick the ladder once you have climbed up! Leave no chance to run away!

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