My Paintings.....

1. A villlage called Mulkalla, Adilabad district, Andhra pradesh, where i spent my four years of my engineering life

2. A reader in a Library

Guest lectures @ Hyderabad Central University

I and my MBA friends participated in the management meet conducted by HCU. So as a part of opening ceremony, they arranged guest lectures by business leaders from the industy. It was awesome lectures, so here is the zest of it, thought would be useful to each and every one of us. 

The Management meet was termed as "Unnati-2007" and was held on 9 & 10 Feburary 2007 @HCU.

Mr. A. Murali Krishna Reddy Chairman "Green Park" and Mr. Vivekananda  of "Visakhapatnam Steel Plant" were the chief guests. 

Sri Murali Krishna: Experience speaks

1. "If you have something in you, you can offer, the  whole world is waiting" ~ the world is flat

2. Bee concept: Follow how a bee achieves nector from flowers

   If the bee doesnt get nector in one flower, bee dont go home, it still tries.

Learning: "Try and try until you succeed"

3. Chalta hai (Hindi) will not work. We have great opportunity, but we have to work.

4. Reproducing in the exams is not important, but mastering the concept is.

5. Work on creative solutions: think out of box, looking at a problem from all directions and coming up wih best alternative solutions.

6. Live in situations: play a significant role in any situation, dont stand and stare at it.

7. Committment + Fire + Learning + inspiration + Involvement = You Go Places

                Offer more, expect less

                doing more, with less

                learn to lead yourself and others by example

                build vision and share it with all

                be competant, acquire knowledge

                harder you work, luckier you get

                the more you face hardership, more stronger you become

Sri Vivekananda: To be an entrepreneur

bench mark against the best

create a good uniform culture

set as an example to others

"depending up on how you behave, you will get the response"

be ethical to the most

we need to have a goal, then only we will strive hard to achieve it

implement what you experience

disciplined, hardworking and being passionate is what you need.

Both the guest lectures were very useful and thrown a valuable insight in to corporate world.

Thanks to HCU students 2006-08 batch for conducting such a great event. 

The Girl at the Library: A Short Story

It’s already getting late. I have to rush. Even if I catch the bus, the heavy traffic....phew. Oh hurry up, I am getting late.

All the rush is for a girl at the library. She is fair with blonde hair in her twenties. There is something special about her. I wish I had all the words to describe her beauty.

It’s amazing! How she picks the book, which I plan to read that day. I wonder how interests and preferences of two people match so accurately. I always get astonished as to how she knows in advance which book I am to read that day in the library. This is not about one or two days but each and everyday.

I always look at her but she always neglects me, sometimes I feel as though she looks at me as of “not her kind”. Every day, I don’t get the book because she reads the book which I planned to. And I am very stubborn by nature. So even I read the same book. How? Thing is that, I read the book but standing behind her. But never even once, she caught me reading her book from behind. May be she knows it, but keeps quite.  I think she likes me.

It’s been many months and I have read many of the library books with the help of her. Some times I get angry at myself and think why I am doing this. But I like it, the way it is.

But how long would it last this way. I wanted to say something to her. Like asking her for a date and explain her how I read many books with her help. She would laugh at me, even think I am crank. But I wanted to do it.

So the next day I decided to have a word with her. I dressed up neatly, combed my hair and polished my boots. It’s my day. I was standing for her waiting at the library. Time passed like hell, I started worrying why she is not turning up.

Oh may be, the way she knows my mind of which book I am planning to read, even she should have known my idea of asking her for a date. I started praying, “God, please don’t let her know about what I am up to, this one day.”

Suddenly the library door swings open, there she is. The moment I see her, my courage to speak starts diminishing. I start feeling nervous. I say to myself, “Come what may, I will speak to her today.” With this, I start walking briskly towards her. Even she is coming towards me.

I stopped at one point with a welcoming smile at her, who was fast approaching me. I thought for a moment, whether, even she is heading with the same intention in her mind. I stood boldly, the moment she nears me, I begin to say “hello…….” She hurriedly passed through me and was on her way to find a book.

I really felt very bad. She should have the minimum courtesy to respect others feelings. And the book she takes now from the shelf to read is “Ghost and its feelings”. Can you believe it. Any way, it was very harsh on her part to walk in and out of my body like that. I may be of different kind “non-human”, so what?

Image source: http://aura1.gaia.com/photos/48/478567/large/LIBRARY_GIRL.jpg

Industrial Giant: Jack Welch

Jack Welch joined GE in 1960. And he believed within next ten years of heading the company. It took him a decade more, but he did achieve it. He became the CEO of the company in the year 1980. Imagine how much planning, hard work and dedication that he went through to achieve this success.

He was born on 19th November, 1935 at Salem in Massachusetts. He had stammering problem in his childhood and to make him self confident his mother used to tell him that his mind worked faster than his mouth.

When his team lost the hockey game at Salem high school, he couldn’t take it. At that moment, his mother said only one thing to him “If you don’t know how to lose, you’ll never know how to win. If you don’t know this, you shouldn’t be playing.” His mother taught him how to be tough, warm, and generous and was the prime motivator for building self confidence in him.

His father was a rail road conductor and used to bring the newspapers left behind by the passengers while returning home to night. Reading newspaper at night became a lifelong addiction for Jack and called him as “a news junkie”. Jack used to deliver news papers in the evening at Salem worked at the local post office during holidays and sold shoes on commission. At early stages of his life, he was able to learn the true value of money.

Once while he was travelling with his colleague in a plane, the air hostess addressed him as “Mr. Jack” and his friend with “Dr.” He wanted to be called as Dr. Jack Welch, so he again went back to do his PhD instead of joining the job.

He remembers till date as to how he became frustrated on his first day at work i.e. on October 17th 1960. Once an explosion occurred at his office, which blow the roof off. Every company would expect their managers to come up with new ideas, but will not expect their managers to blow up a plant. This was an instant where he could have been fired out of the company, but his corporate group executive Mr. Charlie Reed comforted him and discussed with him to see that this incident might not occur in the future. The people whom he met in his life were mentors, friends, subordinates and company heads who taught, directed and supported him and made their own wonderful contributions by paving a way in his life for him to become a CEO.

He was called as Neutron Jack at the time of massive layoffs. For this he responded that he removed the positions and not the people. But one thing he used to be very impatient with the people who under performed.

He was the one of the five sector executives in the race to become the next CEO after Reg Jones. Reg Jones called once Jack and asked, if they were travelling in a plane and if they would have got killed in a crash, then whom he would recommend to become the next CEO. To this, Jack argued that would have survived in the crash and would become the next CEO of GE. That was his zeal to become a CEO.

His part in mergers, joint ventures, was a significant one for GE’s growth. He fought against bureaucracy for many years in the company and has succeeded in bringing a concept of boundary less organization in to the company where ideas flow freely irrespective of ranks and positions.

The four E’s of leadership described by Jack were: 1. High Energy levels, 2. Ability to energize, 3. Edge to make yes/no decisions and 4. Consistently execute and deliver on time. And he said that all these E’s are connected by one P i.e. Passion.

He bought in to the company a concept called “Workouts”, where employees/ trainees would come out with their own unique ideas and suggest it for growth of the company. And at the end, some superior managers are given the responsibility of implementing these ideas, which again will be reviewed in the next session. So in this manner, the company had progressed to become a boundary less organization. He says that being a CEO is the nuts. Every day some or the other crisis would rise up. But at the end of the day it would teach the thrill of winning and pain of losing. Getting involving every employee’s mind to actively participate in the game is what the CEO Job is all about. It is just like taking the employees along with you and showing them what they are capable of doing.

It requires lot of guts to head a company. A brave heart to battle the ups and down’s in the field of business. And that’s how Jack Welch today is considered to be the most celebrated CEO in the pages of History.

Source: Jack: Straight from the gut, Autobiography of Jack Welch

Book Review: One Minute Manager

The book emphasises on the point that human resources is an important asset. And how to manage them is what “One Minute Manager” is all about. The book reveals three techniques to become a “One Minute Manager”, they are:

One Minute Goal Setting:

Usually in an organisation, what employees want to do and what employer wanted employees to do is quite different. So that is where goal setting helps in defining individual’s responsibilities and accountability, let it be for a manager or a subordinate. It is one minute, because the goal should not exceed 250 words when written on a sheet of paper, so that it can be read in a minute. Periodically checked, it should assist the individual to know how far he/she has reached the goal and to help him/her keep track of it. Once the goal is clear, solutions to the problem would be clear. When the goal is not clear and if you ask anybody whether he/she was doing a good job, obviously the reply would be “I don’t know”. So set your goals first.

One Minute Praising:

It says catch people doing right and give a clear feedback of what he/she has done great. And praise sincerely, which in future should act as a motivational factor to carry out similar kind of performances. One minute of praising is, to look straight into the eyes of the performer, and say how it contributed to growth of the organization. One minute because, if you keep on praising, at some point of time he/she would stop performing, thinking he/she is the best. So one minute praising is more than sufficient.

One Minute Reprimand:

When an employer finds out that an employee has committed a mistake, first the employer should confirm the facts. Then tell the employee precisely what went wrong. How it acted as an obstacle in the rise of the organisation. Employer should express whatever they feel and can be angry with work carried out but not on the employee as a person.

The authors feel that most of the companies spend 50-70% of their money on salaries, but only 1% of the budget on training. Instead of spending on maintenance of the building and equipment, if they concentrated on maintaining and developing people, it would result in the betterment of both the individuals as well as the organisation.

If all three techniques utilized effectively, then anyone can become a One Minute Manager. In addition to this, the authors speak about crisis intervention, 80/20 principle, how practically one minute manager works along with suitable examples and quotations throughout the book, making it livelier. It is authored by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. And they define one minute manager as, “One who takes very little time to achieve big results from people”. The lucid language and the “message through story format” are the specialties of the book. Read the “One Minute Manager” and become one. All the Best