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

ABC factor in life

Any fool can criticise, condemn & complain and most fools do

The human evolution theory suggests, today’s modern man has evolved from apes.  Even today we have some common ground with the apes from the forest. But to believe that we have common ground with the killer whales of the deep blue sea is rather unusual. According to Ken Blanchard and the co-authors of ‘Whale Done’, men do have something astute in common with the whales; the TRUST factor. Today our origin has come to a point where we assume everyone comes with an ulterior motive and thus must not be trusted or we are superior and thus the other is not capable of our trust. Here is where we must learn a lesson from the whales. In order to be able to train a killer whale for a sea show, you must be able to teach him. Teaching the world’s most dangerous predator that can eat anything in sight is an easy task if you get him to trust you. That is the stepping stone to building a positive relationship.

How you do they get the killer whales to perform magnificent tricks? They stimulated them when they did things right and redirected their energy when they did things wrong. They were able to shift the actions, collaborate together and encourage them towards the excellence performance. The more attention you pay to certain behavior, the more it will be repeated. It’s like child’s play – the more we clap when the child does the trick, the more motivated he is to do it again. What you focus on is key. Focus on the ‘accentuating the positive’ at all times. Motivating people and creating a world-class organization, is knowing how to manage people’s energy. If it works with these killer whales, why won’t it work with humans?

In addition to this there is a theory about how we can stimulate this excellent performance. The ABC. The Activator stimulates the performance you want. Behavior comes after activation and it is the performance that occurs. Ultimately, we have the Consequence of the behavior that occurred. This is where the manager must provide a response.

Generally if the behavior is acceptable they will either provide no response or if the behavior is unacceptable they provide negative response. On the contrary the best form of response is positive (encouragement and appreciation) when everything is in control and redirection (focusing back on the original task) when everything is not in control. People need to know it’s the behavior not the people that is unacceptable. Make sure people have the same perception to the commitments as you.

We are used to pointing mistakes and blaming others at home and in an organization, but what builds synergy and human relations is the exact opposite. To get rid of people doing the wrong things, you must start catching people do the right things. Praise the progress as it’s a moving target. Praise, appreciation, acknowledgement and encouragement are positive ways of building trust and mutual cooperation. The more focus on positive will encourage more positive behavior and thus a self-sustaining positive environment.

It is a fact of life that people love to complain, particularly about how terrible the modern world is compared with past. They are nearly always wrong. On just about any dimensions you can think of warfare, crime, income, education, transportation, worker safety, health the twenty first century is far more hospitable to the average human than any earlier time.

Dealing with people was the most important aspect Carnegie Institute of Technology & found that 15% one’s financial success is due to subject matter expert. 85% depend on skill in human engineering and ability to lead people.

So in conclusion

1.     Do not fear on future, do not feel sorry about lost past and one has to live on current.

2.   Have goals for each day, week, month, year then you are owner and winner of ABC (Activator, Behavior, Consequence).

3.  TRUST is the source of achievement for every part of life and relations

Do we need to stand alone and aloof?

You have a right to be yourself to accomplish your dreams - Dr V V Rao 

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 families 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, woman in the situation has not entertained the thought of quitting from the present struggles. I am confident one can take the hard times and emerge a WINNER once again. And that brings us to the need to connect after long duration of struggle being enveloped in the jaws of low morale, out of the mouth of sadness, while all cynics are kept wondering when shall the reputation and faith of this generation of family be successful yet again? I believe that for many long years ahead, not only will people of this society, rather all our families must remember our 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 team and 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!

We, as the management, believe it is our moral duty and obligation to inform a larger section of the organization regarding the current situation as well as the future plans. As human beings, it is our obligation to visit people when they are sick, when people require us, when people need courage, when people continue to fight all odds, to keep the turbines up and running. It is for all such people, we believe, we need to find the opportunity to connect and reassure!

According to the human evolution theory, our sophisticated modern man has evolved from apes. It is not hard to believe that even today we have some common ground with the apes from the forest. But to believe we have common ground with the killer whales of the deep blue sea is rather unusual. According to Ken Blanchard the author of ‘Whale Done’, men do have something astute in common with the whales; the TRUST factor. Over centuries we have revolutionized into a socially acceptable society with norms, cultures and values. Though it is not picture perfect, it has its dents and broken intricacies. Our origin has come to a point where we assume everyone comes with an ulterior motive and thus must not be trusted or we are superior and thus the other is not capable of our trust. Here is where we must learn a lesson from the whales. In order to be able to train a killer whale for a sea show, you must be able to teach him. Teaching the world’s most dangerous predator that can eat anything in sight is an easy task if you get him to trust you. That is the stepping stone to building a positive relationship.

Moving to crux of the world’s current crisis – how do you get people to do what you want them to do? Be it at par performance at the work place during an economic slowdown or harmony at home with your spouse and children. It is a three step rule. 1. Build trust 2. Accentuate the positive. 3. Redirect the energy from negative and mistakes.

As human beings we tend to underestimate the abilities of animal, assuming we are the ultimate social beings – but start with an open mind and explore the possibilities. Same goes for people. To build trust accentuate the positive by paying attention to the whale while he does something right. The more attention you pay to behaviour the more it will be repeated. It’s like child’s play – the more we clap when the child does the trick, the more motivated he is to do it again. At the same time, when a mistake is made, redirect the energy back to the right way of doing things rather than criticizing them about where they made the mistake. As easy as said this is indeed challenging to always turn away from the mistakes and praise the positive. We are used to pointing mistakes and blaming others at home and in an organization, but what builds synergy and human relations is the exact opposite.

For most personnel in the corporate world today, there lies a big challenge. Motivating the employees, sustaining the talent, getting high end performance and all this is to be done at low cost. In order to trigger this one must Activate the behaviour that we want by motivating people, then observe the Behaviour taking place and ultimate respond as a Consequence. (ABC of performance) On a concluding note, the famous naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin, in his 1859 work about evolution states that ‘homo sapiens’ has only survived on Planet Earth because of their ability to adapt to change while the other genetic lines died off. Therefore we must stick to the motto but keep changing the ways motivate –be it whales or people at home and work for a positive harmonious and progressive life ahead. 

How to think positive? Just Believe!

Believe in yourself and people will be forced to believe in you. - Dr V V Rao

There may be days when you get up in the morning and things are not the way you had hoped they would be. That is when you have to tell yourself that things will get better. There are times when people disappoint you and let you down. Those are again the times when you must remind yourself to trust your own judgments and opinions, to keep your life focused on believing in yourself. Man is his own star” and 'All acts are our Angels' to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you, in your private heart, is true for all men. There will be challenges to face and changes to make in your life and it solely depends on you to accept them. Constantly keep yourself on the right track, despite the hurdles and distractions. It may not be easy at times, but in those times of struggle you will find a stronger sense of 'who you are' and 'where you belong'. So when you face days filled with frustration and unexpected responsibilities, remember to believe in yourself. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time. We shall then be forced to accept with shame our own opinion from another. Remember what you want your life to be. Believe in yourself and people will be forced to believe in you. Millions of people fail to believe in a life they have always wished to live. They fail to realize their ambitions and give up on their big dreams no sooner they encounter the first obstacle. The power which resides in you is not new in nature. You know what that is which you can do, you like one face, one character, one fact and they all makes best impression on you. The impression in the memory is not without pre-established harmony. ”Trusting yourself vibrates your heart to that iron strong string” all great men have always done so. Our arithmetic computations are opposed to our purpose in life. During the Dot Com boom, practically everyone was buying internet stocks madly. One of the few people who did not buy them was Warren Buffet. At that time, everyone criticized Buffet for his extreme caution and skepticism when dealing with these new stocks. Few years later, after the Dot Com bubble took place everyone lost a lot of money while Buffet ended up being the second richest man in the world! Believe in own vision was one of the reason for his success. We must be ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and layers. One has to be upright and vital and speak the rude truth in all ways. There is a class of persons to whom you do not belong and there is class of persons to who by all spiritual affinity you are bought and sold for them you may go to prison if need be. The other terror that scares us from self trust is our consistency. If you work for gallery it loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. Alex Haley received 200 rejections before he published the novel 'Roots' which is now published in 37 languages, won the Pulitzer Prize and had become a popular television mini-series in 1977. In the early development stages of Microsoft, the company was going to be sold. The buyer turned the offer down because he thought that people would not need to put computers in their homes. Then Bill Gates became the richest man in the world! Sometimes things happen to you, which at that particular moment may seem horrible, painful and unfair, but in retrospection, you will realize that without having overcome those obstacles, you would never have realized your true potential, strength and willpower. Speak your latent conviction and it shall be universal sense. When we remember Moses, Plato and Einstein, we speak about what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the soft glow of the group of scent from herbal plants.