FAITH, FOCUS AND LIFE

We are, in general quite used to manage ourselves well, even with an abundant negative news floating around every news we hear and see in our day to day life. Neither am an alien to these..

-         An elderly person who was a watchman in our office building in Bangalore, who use to talk every time I passed by, slept at night - not to wake up in the morning!

-         One friend, went on a spiritual holiday - not to come back! Friends who promised to stand shoulder to shoulder in thick n thin of a venture succumbs to life  pressure - walks away choosing to be for self!

-         One young partner of a customer went to hospital to cure a sudden illness - not just to block a huge order to our company but not to return back forever! 

These are few instances am witnessing in recent few days. The only difference is, it's happening in one's(my) closer circle forcing to look at things more compassionately.

It's not so difficult to lose hopes when things go wrong with our near and dear ones. This is very much true as I happened to witness in past few months, in the eyes of people who are stared by death or hard core difficulties of life. The very native spirit of negative emotions are very deep and touching. Hence, no complains on anyone and life's challenges...

Here are some waves running across my thoughts...

Self understanding, Establishing a purpose, Aiming to live beyond self, Faith and Focus comes at the center. Better the clarity on these, better it will be to sail in rough and smooth weathers of life, short or long.

Faith, in our potential determines the heights we achieve and accomplish in life.  

          So, it's not about 'potential', it's your 'Faith' in potential..

          it's not about the 'next step', it's your 'Faith' you have on your next step. .

          it's not about 'dream', it's your 'Faith' you have on your dream, to make it a reality. .

      it's not about 'obstacles', it's your 'Faith' you have on your "will" to reach the destination - in spite of obstacles. .

Eventually what works and what does not work completely depends on "F A I T H" - the one quality which has the potential to turn blind-possibilities into realities.

Focus is not only the ability to say 'Yes' to one, but also the discipline to tell No to 99 others..

Somewhere if you understand, what is that I should say Yes to, and make sure to direct Life-Leadership towards that 'One' direction, that "One" is always achieved and accomplished..

Get focus my dear one's... Get Focus..

Anyway we have to live, why not live to the best..

Anyway we have to live, why not live to be the number one..

Anyway we have to live, why not live challenging the potentials within us..

Anyway we have to live, why not be a turning point to ourselves and to many people at large..

Being Agile, the Dinacharya!

Dinacharya says, Anything which is done on a daily basis, even imperfectly,  gives you far more results, than what you can do perfectly well, but done inconsistently/late.

........ and then there are projects that require years of mammoth investments and never get launched or become obsolete by the time they are launched!

Concerns over Transparency, greater compliance and  cost overruns are a well known facts today. To make sure these concerns are addressed and the benefits are reaped early, and often, a modular approach to project management evolved, known as Agile Project Management.

............ Agile Movement, is a brainchild of software development world and has grown and evolved over past several years. The traditional approach is known as Waterfall method, which is a classically linear and sequential approach. There is no question that today, Agile project managements are applied successfully to a broad range of projects. Both users and stakeholders are benefited from this approach: One in which, end users and project teams are partnered in a collaborative effort, focused on the project vision and end result.

Agile Project Management resembles Agile software development, which is commonly practiced in software industry where incremental results are delivered in highly interactive and flexible manner at regular intervals - often in weeks instead of months or years!. Being Agile enables the project team to deliver working products in increments for 'end user input', that later feeds into succeeding iterations. Agile approach can operate well in a more fluid, more adaptive environment.

As many organizations wish to adopt Agile, the greater challenge is the virtual teams which are spread across multiple geographies and time zones. Communication, collaboration and end-user interaction are key tenets of agility and many of the Agile methods require attendance at a daily session. The ability to form and manage such teams is thus critical to the success of Agile projects.

Traditional project managers who manages the triple constraints:  scope, time and resources, through the use of a project plan ought to change his or her approach to managing the Agile team. To succeed, an Agile project manager must migrate from management to leadership; from monitoring compliance to enabling self-direction; and from acting as a foreman to becoming a facilitator of creativity and innovation.

When I say, 'facilitator of creativity and innovation', you know that a high degree of certainty cannot be expected while exploring 'creativity and innovation'. This often places a traditional, risk averse project manager hostile. He or she needs to break the shackles by thinking broader and stretching little beyond to take calculated risks. He/she ought to understand, when a risk is taken, it's not what I achieve, its how much I discover about myself is important. Unless I take that risk, I can neither realise nor achieve.

To be on top of this competitive market place, every organization/department is willing to give Agile management a shot. As the decision is made, it is critical not to turn the implementation into a ‘big bang’ project. Instead, the organization/department should select a small and relatively easy project and build a team to execute the project. This will require assigning the right project manager and the best team members to the project. Once the team has been determined, the members should receive some formal training to learn about Agile structure and best practices. The team should be led by the project manager, execute the project in an iterative manner using Agile methodologies.  As the project progresses, the team and the organization/department should conduct regular reflection workshops to assess the maturity  and the organization/department's capability to execute Agile projects. Over time, the organization/department can use the lessons learnt to build more teams and execute more projects using Agile framework.

With good leadership, being Agile can bring wonders to project team members and in turn to the organization simply because, with every small promise the team upholds, there is another stroke in the painting called Self belief..

I Trust Politicians

I am seeing an increase of fuel price for the 10th time (if I am not wrong) in past year alone, as I am starting to write this. I trust the government and trust the politicians...

It was 2006-07, I use to tell friends and loved ones to get silver and stock it up as much as they can when it was <10$ per ounce. Later, around an year ago, I shared my view to many that silver below $20 would be a good investment. Since then, it has skyrocketed to $45 an ounce. Gold is also up significantly - as is oil, food, and interest rates for consumer loans.

I love my country. But, I trusted the government and I trusted politicians on some aspects. Well, you may say, politicians are same everywhere. I agree.

It's been quite a while, the word "quantitative easing" has been heard very often after 2008 financial crises. Quantitative easing is when the Fed (of US) or RBI (in India) bolsters its balance sheet by buying treasuries to keep interest rates low. It's the equivalent of you or me printing money to pay off our credit cards. The thinking behind such a plan is that by keeping interest rates low, businesses and investors will borrow more money (which is also a form of printing money) and make more purchases.

The result of quantitative easing is always "Inflation", since Fed/RBI prints more and more money. Each dollar/Rupee printed devalues the dollar/Rupee already in print. If you've been paying attention to the facts, inflation is already happening across the world.

I'm investing expecting inflation, personally. That means I'm dumping dollars, dollar based assets and moving into commodities and precious metals. I'm also buying real estate with other people's money - looking into locking in low interest rates and expecting inflation to pay off my debt with cheaper dollars.

It's my belief that investing in assets that hedge against inflation is the best bet.

I may be wrong, but I feel safer with this strategy than with the prevailing one—saving money and investing in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

I'm not telling you how to invest. I'm simply telling you how I'm investing. Its good if you do the hard work of examining the facts and figuring out whether you think I'm right or wrong.

As I said, I love my country, I trust the government, but, but I trust politicians on some aspects. They are simply selfish, do not think of long term stability. They cheat and fool the aam admi. And, they are same where ever you go.

May-11: A BIG milestone was hit as the US debt ceiling was reached. Treasury can keep the US solvent through extraordinary measures, giving politicians a small window to reach a deal. But come August-11, if no deal is reached, the US will default on debt payments!!

June-11: Utah became the first state in the USA to legalize gold and silver coins as currency.

I hope these events are quite enough to give you the right signals on the path global economy is ought to take in coming days...

Whether you want to handover your hard earnings in the assets designed by the government or you want be wise and take charge of your financial situation is a choice you must make.

Thank you for your time for this writing. Wish you all the Abundance.

Human, Religion

The picture says more than anyone could write.

 

Still remember those childhood days.. Going to Dargah's, shopping for Christmas and celebrating DeepawaLi with all..

It was simple and perfect:
Follow your belief, respect others belief.

Roots of India teach the right...

Why is so much hatred seen in the tree?

A Personal Brand

Having been brought up in a pure vegetarian family, there was a time when my brother use to come home and say that he eat fish - but none at home believed it (in fact, he did have). On the other side, when I say I don’t take fish - everyone still looked at me suspiciously! It looked funny.

Though I was, and have remained vegetarian until today, I use to think about the ‘brand’ing I had built for myself. Many times, this does not matter when we are around our loved and near ones. But, this “Personal Branding” does contribute in its own ways at all stages and at all spheres of our lives.

Ancient Greeks called it arête (being the best you can be) and also we have heard it as “honor” or “reputation” - which you were expected or taught to defend to the death. And in 20th century, it was referred to as your standing in your community or your industry.

A Personal Brand is simply a new phrase with old concepts. i.e. How you present yourself to others.

Throughout history, it's been important for men and women to understand how others perceive them, to manage that perception, and to guide it, so that all of their other goals can be achieved.

It is the recognition that living in a society with people, your success is as dependent on what others think about what you can do as it is on what you can actually do.

At times, it was all about having a ”concern” for people living in the city or maintaining “honor” within the family/country or maintaining “reputation” within the society. And in 20th century, your standing was dependent on your community and your industry.

But in this modern economy, companies can vaporize overnight; whole industries can be overturned by a simple change in technology, a regulation or say, globalization.

This makes it so important now, that your brand must be known and available not only to the people in your city, state, country or industry but to all professionals at all time. It is hard to predict when you'll be tossed into a new industry, a new city or a new company on other side of the world. So, it is important for you to consider how you'll be perceived and how your background and skills will be interpreted by others.

Adding to our dynamic global economy, modern technology has bestowed upon us Google, social networks, blogs, linkedin and a host bunch of other means to learn about your "areté," your honor, your reputation, your standing, in many ways - without anyone speaking with you directly. 

In today's standards, almost all of us are in the process of using these modern technologies in one or the other way. But the differentiator is, how much organized and focused are you in leveraging the effectiveness of these tools.

Sensibly, then, building A Personal Brand is more about understanding how you want your professional life to be seen by others, and then managing your presence in both offline and online worlds.

Yes, it’s time to roll your sleeves to enhance or build A Solid Personal Brand. Good Luck.