Sunday, September 26, 2010

Why I did what I did.......

What I did:

I Changed my Job......I moved from Microsoft to Honeywell. Yes, You are correct...I moved to my earlier company.

How I did:

I am not trying to tell you..... how I changed the job. I am want share how I arrived at decision to change the job. In reality it was not a decision to change the job . It was a decision to re consolidate my strength position .


It started with a thought.....a year back...... when i wanted to understand what is that i do which making me successful or failure in what I do. It was search beyond hard skill and soft skill. As I was convinced there are people with better education, knowledge and soft skill than me or less than me............ but the difference in result (success or failure) vary beyond the difference b/w these skills.

First steps happened to be i choosing a NLP based experience with "fire walk". I did walk on hot coal. It was about understanding your fears and finding your real you. yes...i realised...real identity inside is by default is of strength but it get shaded by fears which we don't even recognise.

Than....i wanted to learn the skills of understanding our selves and understanding other at this deeper level. That made me to learn NLP....I went up to NLP master practitioner certification.

I started assessing myself.

My first stop was.....understanding what is my life goals are....I did found out ... " My life is about Being honest, successful, keeping family happy and above all being “myself” ". I was able to touch on my identity as I see myself .... "Selfish fool". This fitted very well with what I truly believe and what ever I have done till date .

Next stop was at understand at personal level dissect my Characteristic and behaviour. Tony Robbins personal strength and behaviour mapping helped me a lot as first step.

I went further with much known methods of assessing my strength and character types ( they cost you a bit but worth every penny!!!).

1. "Strength Finder 2.0" by Tom Rath.....Gallup Press.

2. "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves......TalentSmart.

3. Mayer-Briggs personality test

These helped me to identify my strengths, Character type, My core interests & Environment I work which will help me to do my best.

Final part was my resume to state what my skills stand for.... "My area of expertise include payroll transformation, HR service Implementation & operation, HR service Outsourcing Strategy and governance. I am a certified Six sigma Black Belt & Lean expert. I am also a Master NLP practitioner. My leadership style is of “Service leader”." .

All this took close to 11 months to come together and make sense. Than I told my self..........if these are the things about me which will make me successful or failure than this what an organisation should know if they hire me or have already hired me.....apart from my resume. So I created my resume what I call "Why...How...What ....resume". An approach to make your representation inside out rather than outside in with a conventional resume.




I believe ...if you fully focus on something and work your way towards it. Than what you wished for will get realised. I got opportunity from Honeywell at this point. It all came together well. So I joined Honeywell.

It was also important at this point for me to understand how this can be a good choice in terms of environment to express my skill and behaviour. Moving from a environment which has single Industry, $ 60Billion revenue with 40% Gross margin company to a Multi industry, $32 Billion revenue with 24% Gross margin....... it was choice about....which drives urgency and strategic position a Share Service takes in each company.

Why I did:

This is my attempt to align self with my strengths, environment & behaviour .

as an end note......you always get what you always really wanted as long you know what you really want. Do take time to find out what you REALLY want. Crux is knowing WHAT YOU REALLY WANT.

As I always did from past 5 years...... I continue to do my Life planning than just carreer planning. I belive this make your work life less stressful as you know exactly why you are doing what you are doing.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Dont tell your goal to others untill it is achived!!!

My mother and wife always tell me and my children..........not to pronounce our goals so loudly to others.......it will attract evil eyes........now I understand those evil eyes are my own evil eyes of my subconscious mind. How thoughtful !!!!


Smiling face or filled box




It was Saturday afternoon…a lazy afternoon. My sister was at our place. Discussion got into special dishes they prepared for last festival and how they felt about the effort and experience of the preparation. My mother was giving some tips to my sister and my wife and sharing her experiences.



I was a mute spectator. I bored to be so…….. I jumped into the discussion. I asked them a question. How do you feel after the almost a day long effort in preparing those oil fried dishes? my sister quick to answer …”very tired….”. She is doing this from past 15 years. My mother said….” It is not tiring at all…”.



Some back ground about my mother and sisters cooking skills and cooking behaviors. Both of there preparation taste absolutely same, both try to share there dishes with atleast 2 or 3 other s (other than there own house)…it will either neighbors or relatives or friends or all. They love to prepare and share. They do prepare these dishes bit and fill it in quite a big boxes.



I asked them second question, “what images you see in your mind when you are preparing or what you will be thinking during cooking”. Obviously they will not be thinking about the recipe as preparing these dishes are their expertise. My sister said “I keep thinking about the box which I need to fill to ensure I serve enough to all”. My mother said “I keeping thinking about smiling faces of my grand children, Harish saying ‘this is very good!!!’ and other smiling faces……”



It was big learning for me…….my mother was not getting tiered as she was thinking smiling faces with life. My sister who was thinking lifeless object of filling the box was ending up tiered.
This incident can get interpreted in many different ways. But striking resemblance which I was able to connect was………….what happens in companies with people who work to make the Metrics right compared to people who try to see smile on the customer face.



Well I didn’t mention about my wife response…as she didn’t give one…… though I can imagine her response would have been ….”I keep thinking about the new dress my husband would get me for preparing delicious dishes….”. Well that reminds me of people in companies who work keeping the performance review in mind. Your guess is right….she also feels tired after such cooking.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Inside out


I belive this is teh true defination of "Inside out approch".......... This will work. Let us try asking "why we do what we do"............. be sure not to quote a "result" as a reason.........

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Let the drama & game happen.....



I was finding it difficult to elevate my "foolishness" energy. Energy which let me drive through clouded mountain road with my instinct driving towards my goal......and.........I feel intellectual exuberance with information flowing from unconscious to conscious ...........

I missed this driving force for some time now.



This week end I was in a training session on Transaction analysis for personal excellence.



I realised.............



we must let the drama happen around you.


.......Better if it happen on stage.



But



we should never allow the drama to happen inside you.



You should not ........ belittle yourself or.............. try to get one up position over yourself or......... tell your self " I cant cope with this".


.............

we do split our self in these situations by playing game between our rational self , our Child hood/early life learnings and what has been embedded into us by our parental figures.



Which ever part of our SELF wins........it will let other SELF peaceful. this in turn bring down energy.
#############

Some more learnings from the session...........

We rarely stop and ask this question..........what is the end game..........what do I want from this life...... probably 5 question we can dwell upon

  1. What do you want to happen in this life?
  2. What will leave you satisfied with this life?
  3. What would leave you dissatisfied with this life?
  4. What is your strategy to prevent disappointment?
  5. What is your strategy to get satisfaction?

No right or wrong answer............start your search for answers.......

++++++++++

We spend our time in :

  1. Doing nothing with outer world.
  2. Doing some familiar and repeated stuff which we do every day &/or every month &/or every week &/or every year.
  3. Doing thing without any action or target or aim or result.
  4. Doing thing to get specific result or achieve specific goal.
  5. Doing something to get 'result A' but externally it looks like we are working towards getting 'result B'
  6. Doing things to completely express our true feeling without any kind of censoring.

We always strive achieve certain very personal portfolio of everything at its best balance. Depending upon of our life experiences, Age, relationships, environment etc............the portfolio balance keep changing and internal expectation of what should this balance be........also changes.

If we you look at item 4 where we doing something to get specific result this comes to close to our work/job. This can again be broken 6 same parts.

The optimum balance of these 6 which we want to achieve in any given time and what we actual have on hand. the gap creates our satisfaction with either our life or with our job.

++++++++++++++

And while driving back on that end..............I saw a line "Nothing is impossible" behind a car...............but somehow on that day that didn't make sense..............I felt it is better to say "everything is possible".

"Nothing is impossible" sounded like "Nothing is impossible to ME"

While.........

"everything is possible". sounded like ""everything is possible to EVERYONE".

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Great wall...flute....earthquake

It was great 10 days. Met lot of people.......saw lot of new things........ Understood lot of new possibilities.

Flew into Beijing on 17th night. The drive from Airport to Hotel never is devoid of excitement. It takes lot to explain the address to driver. Things have improved a lot. This time taxi stand had English speaking police but not sure he gave proper instructions to driver. So driver and my self have to do some soul searching before we were able to communicate hotel address to each other.






and what more..........was able to get Indian curry, rice and papadam.









Next morning ...I had a great breakfast.........made me think.......what made me deserve to have such a luxury of sitting at window and have such a buffet breakfast with view of a oriental temple in a Spring......

Than we left for Beijing tour. Great Wall of China, Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square.

I must have travelled till date some 150+ trips across 3 continents covering more than 20 cities..........but never went for city tour ( other than New York ). I am a very bad tourist. I prefer sit at room than get out. Thanks to my boss and my team friend. They dragged me out.

First we went to Tienanmen Square but there was huge security arrangement so we have to divert our starting point to Forbidden city.....

Forbidden City is amazing ..........the architecture, its size... history ........everything. I was particularly got interested in the way they have put Symbols on top of the structure to identify the purpose and protocol of the each building. Building with 9 or 11 animal symbols on top corners of the building belongs to emperor. Building with 3 is for public and so on.

Had opportunity to take photo with cops....... statute of the bird symbolizing the long life. And off course the cleaners’ cycle caught my attention and imagination as well.

The emperor garden is beautiful..........those 200 and 300 year old trees look so beautiful.
What attracted me most was this statute of dragon in front of the empress palace. Dragons statutes are always built in front of emperor palace ( supreme power). But in this case.....
empress was so power full she got it installed in front her palace. True symbol of women's power.
Our next stop was Great wall of China. I was excited to see the wall and at the same time worried if I need to scale the wall with my co tourists .Thanks full they offered to leave me at foot of the wall and go for trekking. They came back tiered after walking for less than 1Km in that very tough terrain.
While I enjoyed my walking and taking photos at the foot of the wall. I know I sound like shameless lazy fellow but that is true.
Than we tried for cable car but it was too late...........they were only offering 1 way drive....and we were to walk back other way. Obviously my choice was not to go........thankfully others agreed.
Than we went to Tienanmen Square...it was full 2 hrs drive back. We were fully tired by that drive.......wanted to get out of the car at the earliest.
T Square was pretty plain. It was more historic & political importance than anything else.
After all the meeting, I flew to Shanghai on 21st. It was cold all along. From HK till Shanghai ( and rain in Shanghai).......especially the air conditioning .......the airport, office and hotels........they almost forget the difference between air conditioning and refrigeration...........I caught with cold & cough.

Shanghai old temple and generals garden are beautiful.
Best part was buying "high end fake Rolex watches". We went for shopping on 22nd eve. Went to a shopping place close by. Got into a semi precious stone shop and asked if they sell "high end fake Rolex watches". Lady said yes. Took us behind the shop and showed some beautifully designed watches.


Than flew into Hong Kong on 22nd. after all the meeting in HK we went out . My Camera battery was off. So didn't take any picture but I will try to get pictures from my friends camera and post it later.
Next day I was all by myself in HK......went out for lunch at close by Indian restaurant. I saw very unusual view of people queuing up for lift to get into to restaurants. que was flowing into foot path. It was common site at 2 or 3 building I saw in same locality.
and this flute player on HK street was a very surprise attraction for me symbolising the divide in the society.

Flew to Taiwan on Sunday evening........to flew back to Bangalore via Hong Kong next day eve. Not had much time to see Taiwan. It is beautiful city surrounded by hills and nature. My hotel was next to highest building in Taipei. When I was in office.....I experienced my first experience with earthquake. First I thought it was me feeling dizzy due to my cold and cough but later confirmed that.........it was indeed a earth quake. Taiwan North was hit by earthquake to the tune of 6.5 at that moment and vibrations were felt in Taipei. Nice experience.


The trip agenda was cut short by 2 days as few meetings got cancelled due to Volcano eruption in Ireland. So I was happy to back home early on 27th morning. But it was funny. my wife and kids had plans to visit my sisters place for 2 days. They were not ready to cut short their agenda. So I am along at home now waiting for them to come tomorrow. Life is not fair.......isn't it.??!!
And did you absorb......so may influences of mother nature all along......I got cough and cold to to cold whether and rain........ experienced earthquake in Taipei.......meetings got cancelled due to volcano in Ireland. We are still at mercy of mother nature no mater how far we go on technology.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Singapore......is it same as it was!


Don't know why this question keep coming back to my mind. During this travel.

I got into Bangalore airport on 21st night. Landed in Singapore @ around 5.30AM.....reached the Hotel Amara by 7.30. It is a "OK-Kind" hotel. Not very impressed. Got my self ready for pre-workshop for the seminar. It went well. Met people with similar interest in HR shared Service and payroll.


My talk was scheduled for next day. I must say it went very well. People provided me very good feedback. Also it was the satisfaction of being able to share my thoughts. it was fantastic , full filling experience.

I am now been invited next conference in September. I am preparing myself for the same.

Also other team working with for being conference advisory board . It is all a very good opportunity to stay connected with latest trends in HR shared service & payroll market. Especially outsourcing model each company is working on.

After 3 day at Conference...it was time to clear my back log actions.









Than moved to Malaysia. Went on Friday morning flight from Singapore. It is 35 min flight. My office in Ptronous twin tower.completed my meetings by evening and than at 4PM I realised my flight is at 6.50PM ( I somehow thought it is at 8.50PM). So I rushed out.....got a taxi. Taxi guy was an 3rd generation Indian in Malaysia. The travel time to Airport in approximately 45 min. But due to some traffic congestion in freeway...........i was delayed. I started discussing Malaysia economy with cab driver. He felt there wasn't much impact on him due to rescission. He was of the opinion................in past decade......his income and expense both has gone up substantially and he is able to save up to 20% of his income .

Reached airport and I was last one to chk in...i had few along with me. Than pleaded with immigration for early clearance in the que. finally boarded flight just in time . Got back to Singapore...........fully tiered.





In Singapore, getting Indian food is never a problem...........if you are in little India than you get better India food than you get in India. Went Ananda Bhavan on Saturday and went Mustafa to buy few toys for my son.
Saturday evening I visited one of my friends......for dinner.
Had very informative chat about life in Singapore.

Sunday i fully kept it for my self to rest and blog.


Will keep you posted on next two days in Singapore.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Amazing dance

After all relationships are about harmony . Harmony exists in contradiction and not in resolution.


Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Me, Mine and Others

post my last week discussion on Bhagavad Gita .............the concept of me, mine and others...........kept haunting me. I was trying to understand this via NLP...... I was able to see these pictures .....I connected with Logical model















Sunday, March 14, 2010

My movie production

on a lazy Sunday morning (today) I took on creating something new.

In last 2 weeks I pushed my self on work to find out more about myself . This search was from my career perspective. So embarked on:
  1. "Careerleader" to find my core interests, organisation culture I best fit into, my motivators, my strengths & weakness, Character that may limit my succecs.
  2. "Strengths Finder 2.0" by Gallup to find my core strengths
  3. "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" to get my emotional Intelligence Appraisal.
  4. Myers-Briggs to find my Type
  5. NLP value finder to arrive at my values.

Best part was all of them aligned very well with each other and also opened up very good directions for my future planning.

Soooooo.........today morning I wanted to summarise it into one pager. Than Thought why not make audio Visual documentary.......

If I am a cartoon....


If I am a cartoon than how I would have looked...........i always wanted find that out. Last week i was able to do his via "WeeMee" in skype.
My be one day when i am able get out of my current 3 dimensional world ........into one of the rest 8 dimension ......than i may find this character alive in that world


Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Child abuse from food by parents

I definatly agree with thsi guy.....if you are not cooking at home and leading your kid to junk food. Than it is nothing but child abuse.........worst......as a parent you are abusing your own child. Dont do it...teach your child about food and allow them to chose their food like we did.



Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Deep inside my heart


Deep inside my heart ....was a secret which stayed with me for years and never been revealed. Stayed fully unaware for me but still being part of me. Life has so many secrets yet to be revealed either inside me &/or outside me. It does revel appropriately at appropriate time.

Tuesday 10th February 2010, early morning 4.00AM I got off the bed feeling heavy pain in my chest with wild heart beating. It grew & creating pain & panic. Even after 1 hour it didn’t go away. I was rushed to cardio hospital immediately in my neighbor car (somehow didn’t go for ambulance....:-)).The pain continued in hospital till 6.30AM and with medicine it was subdued.

After test and consultation it revealed.....I have a heart wall (wall which separates my left part of the heart from right side of the heart) which is bit thick & creating this wild heart beating. It seems I had this from childhood but it has revealed itself only now.

Those 2.3 hours of pain has been an amazing experience. If I take out pain and panic which were incidental to the experience .It was a true introspection moment. Especially last 1.3 hours of the episode. Like concept of ' Last Lecture' this was an hour of 'Last thinking time'. The question which popped out of my mind was ……….' have I made enough provision for my family in case of eventuality?'....' Have I lived my dreams and done all that I can and I wanted of doing'. Answers which I got were very positive. I believe those answers because it came at that hour of my life where I was driving towards what I perceived to be either end of the road or just 90 degree turns which doesn’t appear until you reach the end. But during that 2.3 hrs. I was moving so fast either I cash at the dead end or take a speedy right turn. With god’s grace and prayer of my well-wishers I took speedy and safe right turn.

After echo test I was admitted to Intensive care unit for 24 hours observation. As it was a stepped down ICU, the ‘ flow’ of patients was pretty high…..J . In the beginning I had 48 year old lady in coma in my next bed. Now and then I was getting glimpse of her condition. She died that day.

On my other side was the closed window. Outside the window was resting place for pigeon. I observed 2 pigeons which kept landing on the parapet wall of the window pretty often. They used to play and romance. The romance part was very interesting. They used to open their wing fully and kiss each other with beak……Very romantic and picturesque.

I dint wanted to make the news of health known to my friends and relatives. As it creates unnecessary attention, which most of you know, I am not comfortable with. That day was working day and I had a visitor from Singapore. He was made known about my reason for not been able to meet him. His next stop of meeting was at my earlier company where I worked…………J. Everyone who need to know and I don’t want it to be known has been made aware of. My friends started calling in and not to mention my office.

Next day morning they allowed visitors in. My wife was the first one to come in. She was wearing my favorite sari and looking fresh. She told me, she was not in positive mind. But she knew I will not take this negatively………so she made it a point to take it positively and support me. I believe I was half cured at that movement.

As I introspected more on this during the day…………I was feeling more positive and energized. It was a clear combination of pure fear and contentment. I wanted to talk to my coach. I requested for his time. The discussion did help me to clarify the clutter. It was a combination of pure fear and contentment……both pushing me at that moment towards future. I felt lighter with clear mind.

I must mention this. My wife stayed with me all along. After I being shifted to private ward from ICU…………myself and my wife spent those Friday, Saturday & Sunday together. It was like renewal of our love. It’s been long time we spent time like that……with kids and work……..we didn’t had much opportunity to spend time together for long time. It was very very very romantic. 2 days of heart to heart discussion and just having time for just ourselves was great.
I had my friend visit me on Sunday directly from church and he offered his prayers at my ward also. It was very moving. I had my friends visiting me to and supporting me was supportive.
I got my Angiogram done on Monday early morning. It was clean chit. There was no Blockage. Doctor confirmed to me………….there is nothing to worry as it genetical in nature and it has got activated at an age ( yep..I am getting old!!!). So life will go on as usual and some medications are added.

Overall………..this was a WOW experience. Amazing and revealing.

I must thank all the well-wishers for their prayers.

While posting this on my blog………I saw this quote from Bhagavat Gita “There is nothing lost or wasted in this life.”

Sunday, January 31, 2010

the most scariest thing....How to stop this....?



This can happen anywhere........i felt..the most scariest thing is...it is happening every moment....
When I see people jumping the traffic....when a educated person puts garbage on roadside....when some one uses roadside shade place to urinate .......or road rage ..........or when we see something wrong and let it go....etc etc etc etc etc........we are greasing the slipper sloop to evil.



Those civilians are taking first small step mindlessly towards evilness.in big city like Bangalore in India....the population gives coverage of anonymity. How to stop this?














I am planning a blog. where people can send email with photo of any civilian disobedience they saw in day to day. These days everyone has mobile camera ...they will take the photo and send it to the blog directly. posts will get screened only to ensure no nudity of obvious mischiefs are caught and published automatically. This is an idea let's see how it grows and works out.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

If the current job content frustrates you even though you are convinced about the company

If the current job content frustrates ( especialy lower level activities during the market condition) you even though you are convinced about the company. Than I found the below chunking down of frustration area will be helpfull.

The process is simple.
1. Think about your active part of teh day in 10 units.
2. Imagine your "Phisical activity level" .....and where you spend these 10 units. Mark this on a on a white papare .
3. Imagine your "Intellectual activity level"......and where you spend this 10 units . Mark it on a same paper.
4. Compare how level of your units spent under both level towards same activities.
5. If you find large space in either of the scale that refernce to your frustration level.
6. Than ask how YOU could have utilised thsi space without blamming it on your company.
7. Think how instead you used thsi space in last 6 months or 1 year.
8. List out actions to start utilising this space effectivly going forward.
Crux is to ask how YOU can take control of teh space.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Project MSV

I was at Malleswaram Shishuvihara on 16th Jan. Met Mythliy and other teachers. We discussed for alomost 90 minutes.

Hold on..........let me give you back ground..... If you had read my last month newsletter than this intro wasn't required. I have taken one goal fro 2010 to do a community development project. I thought why not do it with MSV. So I spoke to Mythily madam and took all the requirements of MSV.

Their Primary issue is - Low admissionsCurrently they have 40 in Nursery and 150 in Others. They want to reach 100 nursery and 400 in others.

They believe doing following things will make it happen;

1. Van : This will help them in creating transporation to children which in turn will increase people to go for MSV.

2. Staffing:
a. Need Part time librarian come for full day for weekly 2 days.
b. Need PT master on part time basis for 3 hrs every day. Some one who can coach on specific games like Cricket, Kabbaddi , Coco etc.
c. Teachers for cultural activities ( dancing, Painting, Singing etc) on part time basis weekly one day for 2 hrs. These classes can happen post school hours.

3. Making the school known to people: They still want to continue to make school available for low income class group. But not many people aware of the school and its activities. Basically need appropriate advertisement.

4. Mid day meal for children

5. Building space of 1 Acer

Need your thoughts...inputs....... feedback....effort....involvement.....

Big dream..........good intentions.......let us see how far we can go.

I have started coaching.


Post my Master NLP practitioner training. I have offered myself to performance coaching. It has been very big learning and full filling experience. Currently working with 2 people. They teach me something every time I meet. I keep my appointment with them during Saturday's 10 to 11.


Best part of this is clear application of NLP technique. But what is more remunerating is use of level 3 communication which occurs. heighten awareness on my part to listen to what is not told. more I use my level 3 communication ability......more it is becoming part of me. I can now sense mood of people when i talk to them on phone...i can sense it .


This is helping my presentations in conference rooms better....it is helping me sense untold question of my wife ending in batter relationship..... it helps me to interact better with my children.....


Yes....i am talking about what I am getting from my coaching others. Best part...........receiving good feedback from them about the change they are seeing in them selfs from coaching.
it has been very win win activity.