Leadership

Last night, I was there at the Sime Darby Lecture series with my colleague Subra to listen to Prof Ram Charan, renowned author and former Harvard Professor. Simple message: Leaders work on their basics just like athletes do. And, they are not shy of hiring people who are more clever than them.

Wellness

I read a wonderful piece by A R Samson in the Town & Country, a Philippines magazine. The article on Social Graces: Vintage Years emphasised the simple truth that age serves as a kind of social boundary, much like milestones on the way to a destination.

• Twelve when airlines charge you full fare
• Sixteen to get a driver’s license
• Eighteen when you can vote
• Twenty one for males and twenty three for females when you can marry without parental consent
• Thirty when you are no longer a whiz kid
• Forty when life is supposed to begin but passes by un-remarked
• Forty five when you are certified middle age no matter how you dress
• Sixties when you are eligible for senior citizen status and discounts

Wellness and happiness comes from accepting yourself, whatever age you are. The ultimate test of wellness is equanimity and avoiding the stress of trying to become what you cannot be. It’s fine to be greedy but more important is the acceptance of the gift of life.

My name is Khan

I watched Sharukh Khan's movie, I was so touched by the story line. My family enjoyed it too. The film is about an autistic person but who said such a person cannot create a perfect world for others.

He shows you to be yourself, taught me so much about what prejudices mean. I only wish every American Caucasian gets to see this film. The country that elected a non Caucasian to the country's highest office must be proud of this movie.

It helps erase so much of the prejudices prevailing about Muslims and clearly communicates you cannot stop someone from showering their love and goodwill for you.

A wonderful movie. Just made me sit up and recognise what I should be doing for the needy every day of my life.

Creating a perfect world

Mahatma Gandhi remarked that we must be the change we wish to see in this world.
Yet, we expect others to change but not us.

The world may not be a perfect place but there are huge opportunities for us to create a perfect world for at least some if not all the people. We can touch people’s lives if only we stop for some time in our busy lives and take notice of what is happening in the world. This requires personal change, a personal commitment and a resolve to do things differently.

If we just look around, we see numerous problems that we wish will go away. Problems stubbornly persist despite all our good intentions. Just take the Haiti earthquake or the one in Indonesia; what do we do more than just think about it for a few minutes. It is strange that other than a few minutes of sadness, most of us just go about our lives in a routine way. We take many things for granted. This largely arises from the thought that what can an individual do.

Mahatma Gandhi started the Indian independence movement; Mohamed Yunus started the micro credit revolution. They did not expect others to change; they initiated the change stemming from the belief that they can do something substantial to make the world a better place.

In our work with people to develop them into Rainbow Creators, we work on the principle:

Recognize you can make a difference

My friend and colleague Scott Friedman talks about creating a perfect world. He says this starts from recognising that you can create a perfect world for your loved ones and the communities you desire to serve. This is my 2010 goal.

How can I create a perfect world for my family, colleagues and society in my own way?

What can I do to touch people’s lives?

A quote to remember

Do not let others perceptions of you become true for you

Leadership

If you can inspire someone to aspire to do, to be and to become great, you are a leader. Quincy Adams

A Smile means a lot

Rainbow Creators make a huge difference, they touch people.

In service language, Mr. Sim Kay Wee, former Chairman of Service Quality and Senior VP of Singapore Airlines used to say more service does not equal to better service.
I have enjoyed travelling Emirates Airlines in the past but today was a nightmare.
They did everything to ensure I had a nightmare experience. I travelled with them London Dubai KL. Obviously I chose not to fly business but economy given the current economic climate. I realised that economy passengers are punished severely.

What they did were a few simple things?
• Forgot my lunch for 4 hours
• Served me a quarter glass of mango juice and the follow on never came
• Too busy to serve coffee
• Gave me a bag - this was meant to be service recovery - sewing kit, comb, razor, opened box of chocolates
• They had great make up and looked real pretty

What they did not do?

All the things a Rainbow Creator would have done:

• Smile
• Say Sorry
I wish they had just smiled and said sorry. That would have gone a long way.
Guess life is challenging. Customers have fw rights. Starve and then get out at the airport and buy a decent meal at Burger King.
Emirates Airlines would do wll to learn from the fast food restauarants on customer service.
I real hope they learn well and look after customers well. Otherwise they may not have many of them left.

Saudi Arabia

I have been with Dr Abdul Hai and Omar, my delightful companions in Riyadh. I have learned so much about the local culture from them.

I happened to read the Gulf News - the article Blue Sky Thinking was all about the Rainbow Creators who are introducing low cast airlines and changing the way airlines operate here.

Inclusiveness

I happened to work with a CEO of a major Insurance company in Malaysia, who happens to be a good friend too. 

His Secretary looked Chinese but the name sounded Malay. My colleague and I asked her if she was Malay and her answer shamed us. 

She responded: I am a Malaysian and a human being.

Her ability to look beyond race and at how we can promote the value of the human spirit stumped me. While she was an ethnic Malay, my colleague was Chinese and I was Indian, her ability to reflect human values even though she was young thrilled me. There is still goodness left in this world. 

She is a Rainbow Creator.

Sense of Urgency

Professor John Kotter from the Harvard Business School says while most may know that their organisations need to change, what is likely to be missing and most needed in most organisations is a real sense of urgency.

Rainbow Creators demonstarte a sense of urgency.

The change guru and author of the book Leading Change talks about the first step in his very successful eight step framework. Kotter illustrates in simple language, increasing the sense of urgency is the toughest of the eight steps. This is a book for anyone who wants to navigate the turbulent world of today. Visit www.johnkotter.com for more details.

Legacy

My friend Datuk J. L. Solomon is a great humorist. He will be speaking at the Asia HRDCongress May 11 to 13, 2009. The subject he will be speaking on "Personal Branding" is close to his heart. When I met him on Friday he said his subject will revolve around the idea: Personal Branding is about legacy not currency. Sure makes sense.

Getting right your emotional states

I am sure you have experienced days when everything went right and days when nothing went right. One day you are superb and another day you feel terrible. Research reveals that the one difference between successful people and others is the ability to summon the most suitable states of mind on command.
Rainbow Creators are able to motivate themselves and inspired whenever they want to and need to. They get focused in minutes. Fit and healthy people have disciplined thought and disciplined action. They do it; they don’t talk about it. Rainbow Chasers talk about how good they are and what they are going to do but never do.
Why does this difference take place?
Rainbow Creators control their emotional states. They are able to summon their emotions that create their ability for excellence.

It is often attributed to two steps:

1. State Generation - the process where you intentionally put yourself into a specific emotional state so that you can do what needs to be done well

2. Anchoring is what happens naturally when you are in an intense emotional state and something unique happens over and over while you are in that state. Eventually, the state and that unique "something" get linked up with each other in your mind and your body.

In the next blog we will look at these two concepts and the programmes available to develop these two steps.

Begin with the End in Mind

Begin with the end in mind. 

What is your life plan? 

Let us not get into the great New Year resolutions and then do nothing about them. 

Let us develop into Rainbow Creators.  

There is a famous saying - plan your work and work your plan.

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.

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.

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

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.