Bloganand

On my last day of The Netherlands trip, last evening I was planning to travel from Venlo to Amsterdam to stay at my cousin. This is an experience which prompted me to write this blog to thank our Prime Minister Mr. Modi. After checking out of the hotel I got a taxi to the train station in Venlo. Dutch is the local and default language here even though the people of this country do speak English. At the ticketing counter I wanted to avoid (language issue) using the ticket machine and hence was looking for the manual ticketing. For some reason, the ticketing counter was closed and there was no option but to buy the ticket from kiosk. I was looking around for someone to help me with buying the right ticket to Amsterdam Central station. I approached the first person who I thought could help me. Here is the conversation - Me: It seems like the ticket counter is closed. Can you please help me with buying ticket to Amsterdam central station with the kiosk? Him: Oh sure, let me...

What a game of Cricket it was last week when India won the Triangular Series final by beating Sri-Lanka in a nail biting match. All credit to captain MS Dhoni for the special knock one more time. Dhoni is a real Leader and consistently leading from front for quite some time now. Cricket in India is a religion and THE only game followed by whole nation. That means the team members and especially the captain goes through a lots of pressure situations to live upto the Nation's expectations The debate on 'who is the most successful captain in the history of Indian cricket is no more. What makes MSD such is a consistently successful Leader? Here are the 10 things in my view: 1. Know your Stuff - Mahi knows the game very well. The conditions, opponents, requirements, challenge in each game is different. A great leader knows all these parameters very well and plans the strategies, risks and opportunities. The knowledge of the core domain for any leader is vital and alignme...

We were looking for a tenant for our Nagpur apartment recently. Apart from letting some relatives and friends know about the vacant apartment, we posted ads on a couple of web sites. Not surprisingly enough, most of the leads came through the online channel. Yesterday, we were about to finalize the deal with one family. We did not know the person earlier nor there were any other references who knew the person. However, based on the person's name and employer, it took less than 10 seconds to locate him on Facebook. We could read all (almost) the attributes of the person which we wanted to verify before making a decision to rent our home to him. Who are the people in the close circle, what kind of family they are, the educational qualifications, their likes are dislikes, and many more things. It is very important to carefully commit anything into Internet since there is no 'delete' or roll-back button there. With advent of Big-Data technologies like Hadoop, it is very ea...

In the corporate environment, “ Work-Life” balance is the buzz word used by organizations and employees to measure and qualify the quality of Life. WiKi defines Work-Life balance as “ A concept including proper prioritizing between "work" (career and ambition) and " lifestyle" ( health , pleasure , leisure , family and spiritual development/meditation ). Related , though broader, terms include "lifestyle calm balance" and "lifestyle choices" . ” Although it differs organization to organization as well as person to person, in the current times when we are always ‘connected’, most of us end up spending 12 hours a day (out of 24) for the work. If we consider remaining 12 hours as ‘Life’, there is a 50-50% split between Work and Life really. However, the term ‘Work-Life balance’ seemingly means, work time is something not to be worried about as quality time and the reminder needs to be the quality time. However, if the time split is 50-50 o...

Irrespective of the number of direct reports a Manager has, One-on-one meetings is THE best practice a (s)he can follow for building a great team. A great team is the one which works towards a common goal and takes pride in team's success. A great team's member sub-consciously (in most situations) rates team's priority over individual when they conflict. (S)he is self-motivated, ensures smooth communication with all the stakeholders, propagates positive energy, confronts problems or issues up-front instead of hiding or procrastinating. Almost sounds like a dream right? But, it is very much possible to get close to having such a team; without it being a mere coincidence where all the 'great team members' are assigned to work in your team. It is possible with one-on-one meetings. Here are some of the best practices, if followed well, can turn a good team to a great team – As a Manager, schedule a formal, time-boxed one-on-one meeting every week or every alternate week...

Dear Sharvari, Yesterday was your first day at the Play School, really the first step out of our home. Here I am wondering how fast time flies; you were a small little angle in our life just a couple of years ago. All the small skills of life you acquired over this period brought a lot and lot of joy in our lives. I know you are getting ready to see and face this beautiful world around you. I want you to live your life to its full and go on exploring it with great courage and joy. You need to learn to live the current moment and embrace the present; the past is gone and future is yet to come. Life is only as long as the happy moments we live. You do need to cherish the past but not let it hamper your present and at the same time plan for your future and not let it overshadow your current moment. I know it’s going to be a balancing act but I am confident you will be able to strike it. You tell us your play-school name as ‘Rabbit and Tortoise’ and you also know the story...