Good is the enemy of Great

You want to be great then don't kid yourself that good is good enough.

Great corporations are way above good organisations.

Yesterday I had the opportunity of going with our consultant Rizal for a meeting with an MNC. We were talking about the brand promise and following through.

Why is it that some people really refuse to take anything but the best and why is it some are just indifferent to greatness when it is possible.

The answer I suppose lies within the person - Rainbow Creator or Rainbow Chaser.

President Obama

Just like millions of others I waited for the results of the US Presidential election.

Well, the historic event happened, America chose a new President not because he was black but because of his appeal to a majority of Americans. As I said in my last e news some loved him, some did not like him and some really thought it was McCain’s turn. There is a famous expression in the community where I grew up. When the time is right, nothing can stop change.

Whatever happened is immaterial. The important thing is the character of America.

America is truly the land where everyone and anyone can aim for the impossible. The majority white population proved they could vote for a person from another race. It is not the color of the skin but the policies of the candidate.

Secondly, the gracious concession speech by the defeated candidate McCain said so much about the person.

Thirdly, Obama’s acceptance speech was equally gracious Read the book Say it like Barack Obama.

Fourthly, America is indeed able to lead because of its ability to change and reinvent when it matters most.

Fifth, like most others I sat glued to the television and sat in amazement as I saw vivid pictures of great personalities in joy and sorrow.

If only every country in the world could accept that democracy is about not just winning but the free choice of people, the world will be a better place to live.

He is truly a Rainbow Creator.

WACRA Cebu, Phillipines

I am here in this beautiful island of Cebu with representatives of 49 airlines.

The journey from Kuala Lumpur was a long one - from KL to Singapore to Manila to Cebu but what a place. Hospitality is excellent.

I will be speaking on the subject Creating Your Own Rainbow and Talent Management- B players.

Some interesting statistics:

2.2 billion air travellers last year - this contributed to 35% of global trade.

After 29 years

I was in Chennai India for a day on Oct 2nd.

Life is strange and God works in unusual ways. As I landed in Chennai I called Mustafa Badsah to wish him Happy Id only for him to invite me to my Alma mater as it was the Alumni day - Oct 2nd. Mustafa, a dynamic young man (29 years ago), a year junior to me and my colleague Dr. Nat's classmate is now the President of the Madras School of Social work alumni. He still has all the fire in him.

I land up in the School Campus after 29 years and felt so good. Little did I realise all these 29 years what I had missed. It was great seeing all the alumni, many of them doing great work - Rainbow Creators, my classmates Bina Samuels - as beautiful as ever and her husband Thomas as handsome as ever.

The most poignant moment of the evening for me was to deliver the citation for Professor George, a Rainbow Creator who gave me the opportunity to gain a Masters degree. I was totally unprepared but what I spoke was all from my heart. Professor George's dedication to the cause of education at the Madras School of Social Work is without parallel. I had to rush back to the airport to catch a flight back.

Well I have been rushing for 29 years and I felt I had missed so much and I was rushing again this evening but the difference was I felt good about the evening.

Stop and enjoy the moment. Do not lose the being in the process of becoming - a phrase I heard long ago impacted me today.

Smile

A smile costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes a moment, but the memory of it sometimes last forever. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as no one needs a smile as much as he who has no more to give.

Education

Learn something new every day. Ignorance is the worst possible ally you can have. As Nelson Mandela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Thank God - its Monday

Bringing FUN & Passion back to the workplace

I had the opportunity to speak at this conference organized by Asia HRDCongress. How do we get people to move from TGIF (Thank God, its Friday to Thank God, its Monday)? We can create the passion by ensuring great workplaces. This simply indicates the need for great people to work with. Read Robert Sutton’s book No More Jerks at the Workplace. I have reworded the book title to avoid a profanity. It also requires the person to be connected to his or her life purpose. Is the competency connection present? When people are connected, we call them Rainbow Creators. Visit http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Your-Own-Rainbow-Palan/dp/1599320649/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221963557&sr=1-1 for more details

Self Respect

Self respect is the ability to love and accept your true self. Love yourself and others will love you. One must learn to respect oneself before he demand respect from others.

Learning

We do not stop learning because we grow old. We grow old because we stop learning. The best way to stay young is to keep one’s mind young.

Leadership

A true leader is someone who has the ability to motivate others to their highest level of achievement, then gives them the opportunity and freedom to achieve their goal.

Believe in your dreams

Success will only come to those who dare to dream. Believe in your dreams and work towards it with determination, dedication and self-discipline.

Joy at work

The only way for us to find joy at work is to love what we do every day.

From Failure to Success

Don’t be afraid of failure and never give up trying. Believe in your passion. As Winston Churchill said “Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm”.

Strive for the best!

You can never achieve 100% if you think that 99% is enough. Always strive for the best!

Reflections for Rainbow Creators

I was travelling with Joyce Gioia. A US based author and speaker when she talked to me about Marshall
Goldstein’s , What got you here won’t get you there.

I was intrigued and I went on to read about him. Just after I did that, I went on to re - read Malcolm Gladwell’s book - Tipping Point. As they say he is "just a thinker." But what a thinker. . His provocative ideas are taking the business world by storm. So who is this Rainbow Creator, and what can he teach us?

Danielle Sacks talks about the Accidental Guru and I produce the excerpts from the article:

"I really like that term 'momentary autism,' " a woman says softly into the mike. She is in the back of the Times Square Studios speaking to a room of some 200 people, and more important, Malcolm Gladwell, who's standing solo onstage. It's the second day of the fifth annual New Yorker Festival, and Gladwell has just finished a detailed reprise of the seven seconds that led to the infamous 1999 fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo. Minutes before, every eye in the room was locked on him as he un spooled the nano decisions that misled four New York cops into thinking the innocent Guinean immigrant was an armed criminal, resulting in 41 shots, 19 to the chest. As the woman repeats the phrase to the crowd, you can hear her digesting it as if it has just become a part of her.
It is a term Gladwell introduced to the group only moments earlier when describing what happens when our ability to read people's intentions is paralyzed in high-stress situations. Cocking his hands back in a gunlike position, he had explained in a tone that was part sociologist, part Shakespearean actor, how the cops misread a "terrified" black man for a "terrifying" black man.
"They didn't correctly understand his intentions in that moment, and as a result they completely misinterpreted what that social situation was all about," he said. "I call this kind of failure 'momentary autism.' "
It's only one of many neatly packaged catchphrases Gladwell sprinkles throughout his new book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Little, Brown, January 2005). There's "rapid cognition," "thin-slicing," and the "Warren Harding error," but "momentary autism" is the one that you can quickly imagine this woman using, explaining to her boss why she froze during the new business pitch.
Mention his impact, though, and he modestly tries to brush it off -- leaning, like any good journalist, on data points to support his argument. "Remember," he points out, "even a book that's a best-seller still is only read by less than 1% of the American public."But as the expert in social epidemics knows better than anyone, it's not how many people you reach, it's whom you reach. Gladwell and his ideas have reached a tipping point of their own, and evidence of his impact can now be found in all corners of our culture, from politics (Donald Rumsfeld used "tipping point" to describe the war in Iraq.

Can we talk about our own tipping points and blinks? Can we impact people as he has done? http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/90/open_gladwell.html

Happiness

Pursuit of Happiness – Rainbow Creators

Jonathan Haidt’s book will make you understand more about the pursuit of happiness. According to him, there are several different “happiness hypotheses”. The message is that the purpose of our existence seems obvious. Since we are born with only one certainty, death, and since we cannot take our achievements with us when we go, being happy while we’re here is surely the best way for us to spend our limited time on Earth. But how? Where does happiness come from?

Happiness comes from getting what you want, but we all know (and research confirms) that such happiness is short-lived. A more promising hypothesis is that happiness comes from within and cannot be obtained by making the world conform to your desires. Author of The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt’s writing makes you believe there are benefits to striving for external things. Buddhists and Stoic philosophers counsel people to break emotional attachments to people and events — which Haidt’s view is these are always unpredictable and uncontrollable. He suggests we cultivate instead an attitude of acceptance. More details http://www.thetimes.co.za/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=792273


Rainbow Creators look for happiness from within. We will be releasing in partnership with Advantage Publishing, USA our revised edition of Creating Your Own Rainbow. More details carynn@smrhrgroup.com

A film with the children

This morning I decided not to get into the office. We only work five days a week even though I work seven. At about eight in the morning I went to our training centre to open the Interviewing Skills course for our young managers. Felix was there right on time to conduct the course.

Right after that I decided to see the new Tamil film Dasavatharam acted by the Indian legend Kamalhassan. The story was about a Rainbow Creator. A scientist who decides to work for the right purpose rather than money. The journey filmed in a beautiful manner and acted exceptionally well with lots of positive social messages made my day.

While I did get irritated and became impatient for a little while in the afternoon, I spent the entire evening with my family in the park and play centre.

Watching a film about a Rainbow Creator Kamalhassan I think made me one too.

Even if I am blogging at 1200 mid night, I think it was a pleasant day.

Personal Responsibility

Are you personally responsible?

Do you realize it is all about YOU?

You are where you are because of who you are.

Grow Up

Brian Tracy says that thought that is all about YOU is like a parachute jump: It is scary and exhilarating at the same time. It is one of the biggest and most important ideas that can ever occur to you, or anyone else. The acceptance of personal responsibility is what separates the adult from the child. It is the great leap forward into maturity.

Fully functioning human being

Responsibility is the hallmark of the fully integrated, fully functioning human being. Responsibility goes hand in hand with success, achievement, motivation, happiness and self-actualization. It is the absolute minimum requirement for the accomplishment of everything you could ever really want in life.

Accepting that you are completely responsible for yourself and realizing that no one is coming to the rescue is the beginning of peak performance. There is very little that you cannot do or have after you accept that? If it is to be, it is up to YOU, the individualI had a personal situation recently and all I can say in a nutshell is that the person, who had everything going well, was totally irresponsible. To me, Rainbow Creators are those who are personally responsible. If only we could have every person be personally responsible and accountable, 90% of the problems we see in the world today will not be there.

YOU can make a difference

The first chapter in my book: Creating your own Rainbow – Recognising YOU can make a difference emphasizes this point. As Brian Tracy says everything that exists in your life exists because of you, because of your behavior, words and actions. Because you have freedom of choice and because you have chosen each and every circumstance of your life, you are completely responsible for all of your success and failure, your happiness and unhappiness, your present and future.

The opposite of this is being a Rainbow Chaser – finding good excuses and blaming everyone else for their mistakes. The opposite of accepting responsibility is making excuses and blaming people and things for what are going on in your life. Everything we do is a matter of habit. If we get into the habit of making excuses, we get into the habit of evading responsibility at the same time.

Are you happy with your job? Are you happy with the amount of money you are earning? Are you happy with your level of responsibility and your activities each day? If you are not, you need to accept that YOU are completely responsible for every aspect of your job and your career.

Levels of irresponsibility

If we set a goal or objective and we create an excuse to hold in reserve just in case the accomplishment of the goal is too difficult or requires more self-discipline and persistence than we had thought, then we are Rainbow Chasers. As soon as things start to go poorly, irresponsible people give good excuses and let themselves off the hook. But that will not get them anywhere in the long run.

In fact, a good definition of insanity is total irresponsibility, to the point of needing a straitjacket and a padded cell. Thomas Szasz, the great psychoanalyst, once wrote, there is no such thing as insanity. There are only varying levels of irresponsibility.


Authentic Change

You took the job, you assumed the responsibilities, and you accepted the compensation by choice. You were free to do what you wanted. . If you are not happy with any of them, for any reason, then it is up to you to do something different. YOU need t o change.You are earning today exactly what you are worth-not a dollar more, not a dollar less. In life, we tend to get exactly what we deserve. There is a famous saying that it is insanity to expect another result if you are doing the same thing again and again.

If you are not satisfied with your salary, job or environment, look around you, at people who are doing the kind of work you would like to do and earning the kind of money you would like to earn. Ask them what they are doing differently from what you are doing.
Once you know what they are, accept complete responsibility for your situation, apply your wonderful mind and abilities, back them with willpower and self-discipline, and get busy making the changes you need to make to enjoy the life you want to enjoy. The changes must be authentic. Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself – have you changed to grow up.

Say I am responsible
Brian Tracy says your great aim in life is to develop character. Character is composed of self-esteem, self-discipline, the ability to delay gratification, and the willingness to accept full responsibility for your life and everything in it. The more you say to yourself, I am responsible, the stronger, better and finer a person you become.
And every part of your life will improve at the same time. YOU will become a Rainbow Creator.

Visit my Google Groups http://groups.google.com/group/rainbow-creators?hl=en

Self Esteem

One of the key things that a Rainbow Creator does is to be happy with Self. Rainbow Creators have a great self esteem, they are happy with who they are. I happened to read this story by Novoneel Chakraborty from India who details about a conversation between the sun and the wind about a rose and a thorn. It is a great story about Self Esteem.


What Are You Looking At?

"It always happens this way', the Sun told the Wind."What does?" The Wind, as usual, was curious."Thorns and roses - they always co-exist.""But their outer self is in such irony to the inner self."The Sun gave the Wind a blank look.Surmising the hint, the Wind chose to clarify further.

"Yesterday when I was blowing, I overheard the rose talking to itself…

"THE ROSE: "I don't know why the hell people smile when they see me. I look so pathetic. All my life I simply exist being a sharp and pointed thing, good for nothing except hurting people. Or maybe they feel better about themselves after seeing my silly and ugly existence!"The Wind sighed and continued. "I overheard the thorn too..

"THE THORN:"I don't know why people are afraid of me. Some even ask their children to maintain a safe distance from me whereas I think I am one of the most beautiful things ever created. My petals, my design, my color, my softness, my aura, my romance...where else would they get such an austere mix? And yet...still, I thank God for the way he made me and no matter what others think or do to me, I would rather prefer to remain happy forever as in the end there are so few things in this world which are as beautiful as I am."

"So", this time the Sun sighed, "the rose is unhappy for it assumed itself - probably looking at the thorn all its life - to be just a thorn and thus ignored the happiness that it deserved all these years. While on the other hand the thorn assumed itself to be a rose and thus enjoyed happiness ever since."The Wind nodded."It always happens this way", the Sun said."What does?" asked the Wind.

"Happiness can definitely follow us wherever we go and whatever we do ... only if we know what we are and what actually we are looking at." -

China and Myanmar

Tragedies in both countries.Watching the television made me very sad. Chinese officials have responded very well but in Myanmar, the aid work has not been great.Hope we can all pray for speedy relief and God's kindness to the affected people.

Image

By design NOT by accident

I have been reading this book by Clive Chajet and Tom Shachtman. Dr. Venkata Majeti was kind enough to let me have it and I have been enjoying the book very much.

There is always a question I am asked - can we live our life by design and not by default.
I have been reading this book that shows us how we can shape corporate image by design. A company’s image is indeed a vital corporate asset and can make all the difference in a competitive marketplace. We live in a world full of business images. McDonalds, Apple, IBM, Dell, Singapore Airlines.

A Company’s image is what is perceived by its various audiences. A Company’s identity is what it chooses to shape those perceptions. One learning point from the book – corporate images must reflect reality not distort reality, if they are to positively impact its audiences.

I am sure we can shape our life but that is always going to be the reult of our actions, what we chhose to DO.

Akbar - the Rainbow Creator

I saw the Hindi film Jodha Akbar starring the Hrithik Roshan and Aiswarya Rai Bachan. Ironically it was a Bahraini friend who had asked me to see the film. It was well worth it.

Set in the sixteen century, the film is the story of the greatest Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar and the fiery young Rajput princess, Jodhaa. The epic romance begins as a marriage of alliance between two cultures and religions for political gains.

Little does the great Emperor know that this political journey transforms into a journey of love, one of understanding the human spirit and the common man. In the current context where it is increasingly becoming difficult to find politicians who understand what public service is, the great emperor Akbar shows what greatness is all about – respecting diversity – different cultures, religions and ethnicity.

His success despite his inability to read or write is clearly attributed to emotional intelligence. That one single competency that led him into the history books as one of the greatest Mughal emperors of Hindustan. He was a devout Muslim but still was the favourite among the largely Hindu population. The story of love with music by legendary A.R. Rahman is beautifully filmed, needless to say I learned so much from this film.

Change starts with YOU

I had the opportunity to work with a large organisation in the Middle East. The goal of the programme was to create Rainbow Creators. It was not about having everything to change but to recognise what each individual could do. Change starts with each one. Personal Accountability starts with everyone.

We had an interesting exercise - A STOP DOING LIST before working on a START DOING LIST.

Try it for yourself and reflect on both the lists.

All Roses Have Thorns....

Even a perfect life may have conflict. But don’t let conflict turn your life upside down. Instead, find a way to manage the conflict without hurting any party like arranging roses in a vase without cutting yourself.

Don't Compare

Don’t compare yourself with others. Don’t compare your beauty, success and luck with theirs, but you can take that as an inspiration to improve yourself to be the best you can be.

Challenge Yourself

You are best at what you do. Challenge yourself and try to beat the yesterday you so you can be a better you today.

Authentic Change

It is quite some time since I wrote the last blog. I was traveling extensively through to about four countries - the USA, U.K., Bahrain and South Korea.

While in the US, I heard the cry for change - "Change We Can" from the most likely next President of the United States of America Barack Obama. The general public fed up with poltics as usual are turning towards a young and charismatic leader Barack Obama.

He in many ways personifies a true Rainbow Creator who believes in authentic change.

Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Edmund Hillary, who has died at the age of 88 on 11th January, 2008 made it to the summit of Everest in 1953, and became the first man on the planet to reach its highest point. He was a true Rainbow Creator whose fragile appearance as a boy belied his ground-breaking potential. At school, the world class mountaineer was in a gym group for those lacking co-ordination and admitted to feeling a "deep sense of inferiority". The 40-mile journey to school in Auckland each day gave young Edmund many hours to pore over adventure stories and travel ever further in his mind. On May 29, 1953, he and the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, set foot on the summit of Everest, the highest point on earth. They had succeeded where others had failed, and had survived a journey that had taken the lives of great explorers before them. Despite his great success and the unprecedented feat of scaling the world's highest mountain that brought him a fame he could hardly have imagined, he often returned often to the mountains of Nepal, the scene of his greatest triumph. Sir Edmund Hillary dedicated much of his long life to environmental causes and to humanitarian efforts on behalf of the Nepalese people. More than half a century after his most famous feat, his fame remained undimmed.
His name has become a byword for courage and endurance.
We salute this great humanitarian, a true Rainbow Creator who made things happen.

Manage Yourself According to Time

Time will never stop for you, so you have to be wise on how you use it. You need to prioritise your needs and never forget the needs of others as well.

Good and Bad Changes

Changes are dynamic and inevitable. It can be either good or bad, depends on how we take it. Internet is a good change to life but it has both positive and negative impact to the society. Nevertheless, it is up to us to either accept it positively or negatively.

Be firm with what you want

In life where one can become anything, we tend to be indecisive when asked to choose a path. This has unfortunately resulted procrastination. We need to get rid of the ambivalence and be firm with what we want.

Happy New Year

2008 is here.

Let us focus on creating our rainbows in 2008.

All the best.