A Warrior’s search for Synchronicity

What a waste: A life that is not an adventure. Or at least an attempt to be an adventure – Tom Peters

What set Edison apart was that, with all his boundless exaggeration, he conveyed the feeling that he would succeed. No matter what the obstacles, he would pound away until they were demolished. – Robert Conot, biographer

A really new idea has at first only one believer – John Masters

Whenever anything is ……being done, I have learned, it is being done by a monomaniac with a mission. – Peter Drucker

Ralph Waldo Emerson – the Self-Reliance Man – has returned to our midst as a modern-day hero: We must “stand for some thing” / “have a story to tell” in order to survive professionally. At the end of the day……no body…not teammate,not boss,not technology….can do it for you/me. Our fates…..and careers….now more(much more than ever)…rest in our own hands. This is one of the great truisms of our crazy, weird, wired, wonderful, revolutionary times.

Tom Peters – The Project 50

This story is part of history books now – Intel had to shell out half a billion dollars replacing chips due to a floating point flaw. The flaw had a probability of taking place one in nine billion times (rounding error when performing a division in excel) which meant an average excel user may have encountered this if he used excel for 27,000 years. The generation for whom computer was not a novelty had come of age ( a demographic time bomb as per Andy Grove) and they asked who are you to set quality standards for us. Andy calls this a strategic inflection point where the business can go bust if not handled carefully.

A similar paradigm shift happened in my career when Paul Starrs became Sales Manager of Middle East & Pakistan. Paul belonged to the demographic time bomb generation who had grown up using extensive amounts data and analysis to make commercial business decisions. Paul brought this hunger for data and analysis into the organization (in Middle East) and in an endeavour to cater to that demand (strategic inflection point) I gathered new skill sets and added value.

• Committed
• Determined to make a difference
• Focused
• Passionate!
• Risk Seekers
• Irrational about the righteousness about their life’s project
• Ahead of their time./Paradigm busters
• Impatient (But paradoxically prepared to stay the course
• Action obsessed (Mantra Ready.Fire!Aim.)
• Made l-o-t-s of people mad
• Creative. Quirky . Peculiar
• Rebels (Scientist and Artists as well as the social – political types)
• In the Establishment’s face. Flouted the chain of command
• Irreverent. Disrespectful
• Masters of Improvisation. Thrive of c-h-a-0-s. Exploit c-h-a-o-s.
• Ask Foregiveness> Seek permission
• Bone Honest!
• Flaws (Big pluses, Big Minuses)
• “Tuned into” followers’ needs and aspiration

• Absurdly good at what they do.

Example – Gandhi / Einstein / Chaplin / Leonardo Davinci / Michelangelo / Galileo / Kennedy / Martin Luther King

There is a Fool in each of us, you know.

A rash, brash, harebrained, audacious, impudent,

Ill-suited, sponatneous, impolitic, daredevil Fool, which,

In most of us,

Was long ago hog-tied and locked in basement.

If you want to see a full-fledged Fool in action,

Watch an undisciplined child.

(The more undisciplined, the better!)

Oblivious to concepts of appropriate behaviour,

Driven by rampant curiosity and innocent lust.

Raw genius,

Resolutely stumbling into hurt and wondrous discovery.

Inspired, annoying,

Rapturous, petulant.

The creative savage of our being.

Savage, Fools,

Do not a society make.

So we tame the little Yahoos.

We teach them the meaning of the word “no.”

We teach them the benefits of boundaries.

We teach them the value of our learned lessons.

When our teachings fall short,

Our society begins to unravel,

And the quality of our culture declines.

So tame, we must.

But we have been slow to learn how to tame the Fool

Without also interring

The Fool’s innate creativity and inborn genius.

With the bath water, the baby is cast out.

Gordon Mackenzie – Orbiting the Giant Hairball.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in adapting the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man – George Bernard Shaw – Man and the Superman

Stanislavsky once wrote that you could play well or badly, but play truly. It is not up to you whether your performance will be brilliant – all that is under your control is your intention. It is not under your control whether your career will be brilliant – all that is under your control is your intention. If you intend to manipulate, to show, to impress, you may experience mild suffering and pleasant triumphs. If you intend to follow the truth you feel in yourself – to follow your common sense, force your will to serve you in the quest for discipline and simplicity – you will subject yourself to profound despair, loneliness and constant self-doubt. And if you preserve, the Theater, which you are learning to serve, will grace you, now and then, with the greatest exhilaration it is possible to know – David Mamet

We get distracted by what is outside our control….(Success) begins by trying to make each day count….If you sincerely try to make each day a master-piece, angels can do no better – John Wooden

Read the rest of this entry »

I am very often asked the question, when I say, I am from India, “You worship all those snakes, cows etc, don’t you?” and I say “Yes” and they say “But that’s so wrong” and I wonder whether I should risk explaining to someone who is a full cup…(no room for learning or waking up)

Bible says – Man is the crown of creation and everything in the world is for his enjoyment. This was the mindset that spurred colonialism, industrial revolution, plundering of earth’s resources and finally led to climate change. Indian philosophy attributes a personality to animate and inanimate object …..every single ‘it’ has a God in it. The point of view is much similar with the Gaia hypothesis – and this started centuries ago.

Regarding snakes…that’s the most compelling ecological vision I have ever come across. In India there is a concept called “Sarppathara”. ‘Sarpam’ means snake and ‘thara’ means home or foundation. The idea was to leave a sanctuary for the snakes to live nearby every settlement. Not to disturb them and that area was left untouched. No body would clean up or cut the trees. That was considered the abode of the snake gods and they were worshiped. Last year, I made a trip to ‘Mannarassala’, a famous Snake God Temple. Just a couple of kms away from the national highway this temple stood surrounded by thick rain forest, where sunlight did not reach the roots of the trees, dense foliage. While walking through the walkway you felt transported into a different era, centuries ago.

By giving the concept of snake gods to the common man in India, the visionaries were creating a belief to preserve ecological balance. They had stimulated responsible co-existence centuries ago. However that was washed away with the advent of western influence.

“School is like starting life with a twelve-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards. I should know.” – John Taylor Gatto – 1991 New York State Teacher Award Winner of the Year”Compulsory Mass schooling is an aberration in history and for the Organisation Man Economy. It equipped generations of future factory workers and middle managers with the basic skills and knowledge they needed on the job. And the broader lessons it conveyed were equally crucial. Kids learned how to obey rules, follow orders and respect authority – and the penalties that came with refusal.

This was just the sort of training the old economy demanded. Schools had bells; factories had whistles. Schools had report card grades; offices had pay grades. Pleasing your teacher prepared you for pleasing your boss. And in either place, if you achieved a minimal level of performance, you were promoted.

Home schooled children nearly perform extremely well on nearly all measures of socialization. One of the great misconceptions about home schooling is that it turns kids into isolated loners. In fact, these children spent more time with adults, more time in their community, and more time with children of varying ages that their traditional school counterparts.” – Daniel Pink – Free Agent Nation – The Future of working for yourself

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!