Saturday, August 15, 2009

Be the change you want to see…

A little child pestered her father who was back after a busy day at work to play with her. The father, not in a mood to accede to his daughter’s demand, kept putting her off. The little girl however was adamant. Hoping to buy more time, the father took a part of the newspaper, which had a world map on it, tore it into many pieces and asked the girl to put them in order and then come back to play with him. To the father’s surprise, the child returned in a few minutes saying, “Papa can you play with me now?” “How did you join these pieces so fast?” the father asked. The little girl replied “…papa, I don't know anything about the countries in the world, but the other-side of the paper had a man’s face and I knew where his eyes, nose and ears are ...and so when I got the man’s face right, the world was in place!”

The story sounds quite common, but reflected a deep inner meaning- most of the larger problems in life can be fixed if we get our personal life and attitudes right. This was just the beginning of Mr. S. Ramakrishnan’s (CEO, Real Estate of Marg Limited) motivational talk. Before joining Marg, Mr. Ramakrishnan who is a certified chartered accountant had a brief stint with IBM Daksh. Author of the book “You can become a complete manager” Mr. Ramakrishnan kept us enthralled with his thoughts on how to succeed in our career. From the beginning of his speech till the end, he gave us some of the best solutions to both personal and professional life that plague professionals of the corporate world today.

To the question “How do you become a successful leader?” the candid reply was, “Accepting the past, Changing the present and Aligning the future”. The purpose of the gerund "ing" in all the above processes is to denote continuity, he said. Drawing from his varied corporate experiences, he took us through the professional life cycle and enlightened us on how to stay motivated and effective in our careers. Explaining the work-life-social balance through the three sides of a triangle, he said that unless all three aspects augment, the area of the triangle would not increase. Replete with vivid illustrations and thought-provoking ideas, his entire speech was an illumination into the realm of higher management philosophy. We were truly enlightened by the session and took a step a forward in learning for the real world.

K Sarathy, IT Varsity, 4th Batch, CBS 2009-2010

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