wisemedia's posterous

Shravan Shetty is a Independent Learning & Development professional.
He is passionate about movies,comics,cartoon strips, books, music and other media and metaphors and believes that they can be powerful bridges to transform the way we learn , teach , collaborate , innovate and progress.

To know more about his work , connect with him on http://in.linkedin.com/in/shravanshetty

Check out his presentations and documents on http://www.slideshare.net/shettyshravan

E-mail me him at consultshravan@gmail.com

Google Talks : Leading@Google: Marshall Goldsmith

Leading@Google: Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith's current book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, is a New York Times best-seller and was ranked as America's #1 best-selling business book in The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Goldsmith identifies 20 bad habits, mostly behavioral problems, that hinder high achievers from reaching future goals and suggests methods for promoting behavior change.

Marshall Goldsmith received his Ph.D. from UCLA. He teaches executive education at Dartmouth's Tuck School and frequently speaks at leading business schools. Dr. Goldsmith is co-founder of Marshall Goldsmith Partners, a network of top-level executive coaches

Martin Luther King Jr Famous Speech - I have a dream

Hi
 
Martin Luther King Jrs Famous Speech

" I Have a Dream"  speech given on August 28, 1963.



 
Shravan Shetty
Career Analyst|Executive Coach|Facilitator
Twitter: consultshravan

Keep the Spark - Chetan Bhagat

Keep the Spark By Chetan Bhagat


Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak  to you.

This day is about you. You, who have come to this college,leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to
become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are
few days in human life when one is truly elated.  The first day in
college is one of them.  When you were getting ready today, you felt a
tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what
would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so
much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you
that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about
keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy
most, if not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year
old twin boys  have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make
them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park.
A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for
birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they
will cut their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks.. But when  I see
older people,  the spark is difficult to find.. That means as we age,
the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull,
dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of
Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is
lost.  So how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing
- to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard
against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve
and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is
possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to
company pay package, a particular car or house.

Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material
landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where
money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big
achievement.

But it isn't the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr Ambani
would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not
dance anymore. Steve Jobs won't be working hard to make a better
iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they
do it? What makes them come to work everyday?

They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes
them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good.
If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to
interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you
practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you
cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level.
Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed  with a random set of genes and circumstances in which
we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of
nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that.

I must add, don't just have career or academic goals. Set goals to
give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before
successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental
peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup.
There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not
enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes -  Life is a  tough race, it is a
marathon or whatever.. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of
those races in nursery school. Where you have to run with a marble in
a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point
coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the
marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your
life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling
of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously.
One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes.
One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from
the yoga practice. The teacher said  - don't be serious, be sincere.
This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my
job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions
on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense
criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather,
how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really
temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If
we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500
weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok, bunk a few
classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not
programmed devices.

I've told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking
it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four
storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame.
These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration,
unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the
expected return. If things don't go as planned or if you face failure.
Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out
stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will
need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I
wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians
kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how
much failure can hurt you.

But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would
cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at
something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's
where you want to be.

Disappointment' s cousin is  frustration, the second storm.  Have you
ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is
especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job
you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don't know if you
chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for
Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely
lucky, but it took me five years to get close to  a release.

Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into
something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with
it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long
time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain
enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was
learning how to write scripts  , having a side plan – I had my third
book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions
in your life  - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it.
Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign
somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is
how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful
faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but
everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few
opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to
make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to
achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high,
and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some
people luckier than you.

In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this
speech in English means you are pretty darn lucky by Indian standards.
Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what
we don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers
cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok.
I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are
more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your
spark..

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you
grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all
kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you
still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize
you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you
feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can
create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may
drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop
playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give
up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family.
But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise.
Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I've told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment,
frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like
the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You
just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful  years of your life. If
someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose
college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, you eyes will
shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark
alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends.
And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark
alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And
there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of a
billion sparks.

 


 
Shravan Shetty
Career Analyst|Executive Coach|Facilitator
Twitter: consultshravan
 

Go kiss the world !- Subroto Bagchi


Go kiss the world !

(Defining Success)

(This is the address by Subroto Bagchi, COO, MindTree to the Class of 2006 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore on "Defining Success". July 2nd 2004.)

 I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school

near-by and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble,

my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely

defines what success means to me today.                                                                  

 

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government - he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

 

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by

the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father

would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say,

"You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it".

That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

 

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement Of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons.

We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

 

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said,

"I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

 

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and

built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

 

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

 

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair".

 

I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once.

 

Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

 

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world.

In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked,

under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst.

 

One morning, while attending to my father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned.

 

His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world. My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post- independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major

issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.

 

Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

 

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees 300, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity - was telling me to go and kiss the world!

 

Success to me is about vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy f pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

 

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed.

Go, kiss the world.

 

Shravan Shetty
Career Analyst|Executive Coach|Facilitator
Twitter: consultshravan