A dream always seems feasible to execute but the reality of it being harsh. Why?

'Do not look at the low points in your life as defeats,
but as opportunities to make progress'

The enterprising individuals with or without MBA, who started their own ventures they were driven by the desire to prove themselves. To lead interesting, passionate, meaningful lives their stories say one thing loud and clear. You don’t need a fancy degree or a rich daddy to dream big and make it happen it’s all in your mind, your heart and your actual effort.

A dream always seems feasible to execute, but while we are doing the actual execution, the reality of it being harsh, hard and tough sets in.

To realize the dream, you therefore need to use measured reality of objectives, targets, tasks, process and risk and practically follow through with measurements. Follow through your actions with practically established rhythm and progress will be visible.

‘If you have a positive attitude showing you have faith in someone, that person will probably try to live up to your expectations.’

A systematic way that helps understand the practical realities and thus enable decision on actions required to progress will go a long way in seeing you through.

There are a variety of ways in which we may react to results. This may be to trigger specific activity relating to performance (i.e., an improvement plan) or to use the data merely for statistical information. Often closely tied in with outputs, performance metrics should usually encourage improvement, effectiveness and appropriate levels of control.

For example: Clock rate of a CPU, Calories per serving, Contrast ratio of an LCD, Frequency response of a speaker, Fill factor of a solar cell, Resolution of the image sensor in a digital camera, Detection performance of a solar system, Noise figure of a radio receiver, Battery life of a laptop computer and etc..

One more example when we would like to build customer centric efforts and dedication, we must measure customer satisfaction and with respect to customer satisfaction, market share and growth must be measured. One has to therefore work on the realities such as;

Customer satisfaction index: Percentage of complaints, invoice accuracy rate, percentage of break downs, selling price calculation time, field service response time, contract negotiation time, cycle time offer to order, evaluation time for warranties, product performance, component failure rate and etc..

Market share and growth: Churn ratio, Market share, Market share index, Market success factor, win/lost ratio, Percentage of escalations, percentage of new customers per year, returns % sales, exploitation index, coverage index, reach of service locations, quotation conversion, percentage of service requests, percentage of warranty requests and etc.

Story taken from ‘Who says elephant cannot dance’ ‘We announced first quarter operating results at the end of April and they were dismal.

Revenue had declined 7 percent. The gross profit margin had fallen more than 10 points to -39.5 percent from 50 percent.

The company’s loss before taxes was $400 million. In the first quarter of the previous year, IBM had had a pretax profit of close to $1 billion.

At the end of May I saw April’s results and they were sobering. Profit had declined another $400 million, for a total decline of $800 million for the first four months.

Main frame sales had dropped 43 percent during same four months…’ and the story goes on that the performance was very bad and many journalists had predicted that IBM would be shut down.

However it was not the case. Louis V. Gerstener, Jr. revived the company from a state of dismal to the greatest company in the world. One of the most important aspects of revival was that the performance measures had been analyzed and the company had taken brave and hard decisions as well as acted on those decisions for its revival.

If you want to start a business, I would say find out something which is not available and which people want a hunger, a need for service or product then you go out to satisfy the need, in the best way possible.

Mundane self-scoring offer immediate feedback even to CEOs

Self scoring

Without effective monitoring and measurement, our performance is like driving at night without the headlights on - you know you are moving, but you cannot tell where you are headed. Self check list will help you track performance and periodically evaluate your future direction with respect to key performance indicators and key success factors too.

“Monitor, Measure and Mundane Improvement - The rule of Success” – Dr. V. V. Rao

Ashok Soota believes that ‘Self awareness begins with assessment and that capacity needs to be refined overtime’ consciously and reflectively. You need to self assess to be self-aware and sometimes the picture needs to be held through the eyes of others’ and ‘self awareness requires deep reflection in silence of the mind. The reflection presents itself only when the water is calm.’

CEOs typically spend 10 to 12 hours a day when they need to chalk out a clear agenda for each meeting, set tight calendars and also schedule meeting at dinner and lunch. Delegation, planning, setting priorities, work on the vital issues, self evaluation, time management and effective task management are some of the definite skills they master. Maintain logs of what was done and what needs to be done from short term to long term perspective and setting achievable goals are the cream of skills being practiced by most of the CEOs.

1. We do not know what we do not know.
2. We cannot do what we do not know.
3. We will not know until we measure and evaluate.
4. We do not measure and evaluate what we do not value.
5. We do not value what we do not measure and evaluate.

Benjamin Franklin recounted how he identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate then made his own measurement chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, he’d score himself on whether he lived up to his goals.

You must have a similar scoring chart—a kind of calendar with all your measures, in which you can give yourself a √ (good) or an X (bad)

We’re much more likely to make progress on goals that are broken into concrete and measurable actions, with some kind of accountability. This approach makes it easier to take action, plus it makes progress more obvious—which acts as positive reinforcement.

So has keeping a score chart will help to stick to your goals? Absolutely!

Even without making a scientific score, just feeling the list of your goals a few times a day helps keep them active in your thoughts.

Another most important factors for not completing the task which is in your hand is that you do not have clear boundaries such as you do not have clarity on what is the scope, deadlines, targets, efforts required or why we are doing it. Eventually, all these lead to an incomplete mind set with unknown and undefined boundaries. Such unknown and undefined boundaries bring unknown rules and unknown rules bring less clarity on constraints, doable actions and resources.

Keep setting new goals: Boundary will force us to write down our goals and thus achieve more.

Analyze your behavior: You may analyze your time management; you may analyze your interpersonal skills and may analyze your performance.

Remove time wasters: You start thinking in that direction of what are the time wasters in your professional and personal arena.

Travel with purpose: This boundary will provide an indication at each time you travel with a self evaluating question, ‘Is this tour useful and is there any definite purpose?’

All the above boundaries create opportunity to make rules and create an environment for betterment.

Negative peer pressure is a thorn in your side

Loneliness is often the result of one's negative attitude - Dr V V Rao

Peer pressure is the influence exerted by a peer group, encouraging individuals to change their attitude, values, or behaviors in order to conform to group norms. Peer pressure is most common when we get into this trap because of a lack of maturity to handle pressure from friends, colleagues and society. Also we behave negatively towards those who are doing good, earning money, getting promoted and what not. 

'True victory means complete control over the sense of organs'

Peer pressure can also have positive effects when people are pressured toward positive behavior, such as volunteering for charity or excelling in academics or athletics, by their peers. Most of the peers influence each other in negative ways. If women nor allowed to shoddy short cuts then neither should men. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. 

'A person is pronounced great when he can face a difficult situation with happiness'

For example, few employees in a company might try to steal your work and take praise or credit for the work you did. A survey of small US manufacturing firms found that over half have used unethical, and sometimes illegal, tactics to collect information on competitors. Many have, for example, collected pricing details by acting as potential customers. Firm in these businesses spend an estimated $10,000 to $100,000 each gathering information about competitors every year [J. Sindrich, ‘Many Small Manufacturers Admit Deception’ Reuters dispatch, May, 2001]

'What separates a highly developed man from an animal? Thoughts'

A leopard or a lion approaching – but as soon as the danger passes, gazelles stop and go back to grazing peacefully without a care in the world. But human beings cannot distinguish between real dangers and imagined ones. As Mark Williams, a clinical psychology professor at Oxford, explains, "the brain's alarm signals start to be triggered not only by the current scare, but by past threats and future worries ... So when we humans bring to mind other threats and losses, as well as the current scenario, our bodies' fight-or-flight' systems do not switch off when the danger is past. Unlike the gazelles, we don't stop running." This is modern man’s predicament, perfectly summed up by Michel de Montaigne: “There were many terrible things in my life, but most of them never happened.” [Arianna Huffington]

'The more you try to guess, the less you are at rest'

Appeasement:The appeasement of Hitler by Britain and France in 1935-1939 was a huge mistake. Hitler's Germany was initially weak, and gradually became more aggressive as it became stronger. Hitler, the ultimate aggressor who wanted the entire world and said so clearly, could be stopped sooner. But instead, these countries turned to appeasement and to great unilateral reduction of their own military forces. The result was that when Hitler invaded France in 1940, their armies were weak and not modern, while his modern army used not only German weapons, but also the arsenal of the dismantled Czech army, enough to equip 40 divisions. Sacrificing Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler just gave him much more power to defeat the western allies.

Why past is brilliant than present?

Past full of memories of yesterday, future remains unknown till tomorrow, today is with you - Dr V V Rao

"Why does it matter? Why would a 40-year-old man care about a car he drove when he was 18?" he asks. It matters, quite simply, because nostalgia makes us feel good. But is that all?

Most of our days are often filled with routine activities that are not particularly significant — shopping for groceries, commuting to work and so forth. Nostalgia is a way for us to tap into the past experiences that we have that are quite meaningful — to remind us that our lives are worthwhile, that we are people of value, that we have good relationships, that we are happy and that life has some sense of purpose or meaning. Most important of all, we look back at the highs and lows. We back at our achievements, successes and failures.  It gives us the thrill we had in that very moment, we express the emotions we experienced years ago. We also find solace and a comfort zone in our own arena. The past memories rarely have any unbroken paths, yet we look upon discoveries we made. We look back at the journeys we have lead together and thus a special belongingness to a certain group. We also feel protected in this belongingness like it was our very own safe haven. Having called our past a form of a safe haven it is not easy to move away from it.

In these hard times, do we need to stand alone and aloof? My answer is a ‘BIG No’. Does anyone like to be alone? Are our family and friends alone?  Are we down-hearted? Our feelings keep changing as well as such thoughts keep coming and going. But what we want to appreciate is that every man and woman has not entertained the thought of quitting from the present struggles.  In these circumstances brings us to the need to connect to our past and those moments of joy being enveloped in the jaws of high morale and faith of these current days of ours be successful yet again. I believe that for many good long moments ahead, not only you, rather all our families must aim for our new victory. Wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts and looks back to what we have gone through and what we've done, they will say "do not quit, results did not yield without efforts”,  turn around straight forward and stay successful as a courageous people.  We have emerged from one deadly struggle - a terrible fear has been cast on the ground and awaiting for our judgment and our mercy!

A Standard Life study suggests 28 to 40-year-olds don't plan for the future because they prefer to reminisce about past times. One shouldn’t revisit it as a way of avoiding the present or not thinking about the future. If you spend too much time thinking about the past, you are simply not going to be prepared for the future socially or emotionally. While highlighting the benefits of nostalgia, a 2006 report in Psychology Today magazine has warned that “overdoing reminiscence” risks an absence of joy derived from the present, and a reliance on past memories to provide happiness.

Therefore it is important to tune your nostalgia to live in the present and to be prepared for the future. An extensive survey has developed a healthy nostalgia workout in order for healthy emotional life.

List cherished memories

Find photos or mementos from happy times

Close your eyes and think about what is outside the "picture frame" to conjure subtle details

Reminiscing with people from your past strengthens relationships

Take mental snapshots and save mementos of happy times for future nostalgia

This article was written by my lovely daughter Bhavika