A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were leaving for an evening walk. She was listening to Ilayaraja’s playlist. The song that was playing was “வெற்றி நிச்சயம் இது வேதசத்தியம்”. [Vetri nichayam idhu veda sathiyam - Translated: Victory is sure, it's Vedic truth]
Pausing the song, she looked straight at me. I sensed an impending event. Unaware of the headphones on, she yelled. “If success is assured, why have I not felt success?” The time bomb was ticking. I countered, “Who told you that you have failed?”. This works with my wife always. A return question as an answer. “Let me rephrase the question back to you. How long do we wait before giving up hope for success?” The bomb had gone off. I hinted we leave for a walk. Without a word uttered, we traveled half a kilometer. She looked at me and gestured with her hands. “Your answer, please” I knew my time was up. Her wait was for one of my motivational stories. But I had none in my kitty. Wanting to surprise her, I choose a non-mythological one this time.
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The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker Some months back, my son was lying down and reading in his room with his light source behind him. As usual, I started to shout at him and said the light should always shine from your left. Then he looked sharply at my face and asked "Why?". I responded to him "Look, you have a long time to go and your eyesight should be good." He returned to his book "Appa, my eyes are fine. What are you worrying about?" I said "Sustainability. Can your eyes take this sort of abuse" He immediately dropped the book "What do you mean by Sustainability?" I wanted it to be simple, so I gave this explanation. Sustainability consists of fulfilling the need of current without compromising future requirements. "Yeah yeah, I know that" my son replied nonchalantly. "Why this cynicism?" "Look here" he showed the book to me. It was Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. "This book says that the move to become an agrarian community is not a good move" I started to nod while he continued "I know you will negate me". He paused for a while "But is there something about this issue in our ancient scriptures?" Few weeks back during the dinner table, my kid asked a very pertinent question. "Appa, you started working on the ICE engines when I was in Kindergarten. Then you moved to Telematics & Connected cars. Today you are working in EV. Is there an end to this journey?"
As any parent, I wanted to answer this as "development is a journey to an unknown destination". Then I took a step back and wanted to understand myself what is development? I went back a little and saw that the Industrial revolution in Britan killed the Chennapatna Toys in South Inda. Many of the policy makers then said it was an inevitable trade-off for development. I wasn't convinced and then went a little back in time, 60 million years back. We were just apes jumping from one branch to another. Then without warning one day we suddenly decided to take to the grounds. We then started to walk uprightly. It was development but in that due course we lost some of our monkey abilities. The trade-off exisited then too. No matter how much we talk about it, still there is a lot of confusion around it - quality. Where did this topic come from? I took my daughter to the mall to get her a new dress and while shopping; she was struggling to decide. I enquired what the problem was. She replied, “Appa, which is a higher quality. Our two-year-old Camry or a new mini cooper” That question threw me aback. It opened a quiet new line of thought. I defined quality to my daughter on 2 parameters - Manufacturing and Design. What I find is that it is useful to define quality using these 2 parameters. The conflict that arises between them always leads to confusion. She asked me, “Appa what confusion. I have no doubts”. I had a lot inside of me. Quality of Manufacturing - the ability to remove any variations from the specifications that a user may care about. Quality of Design: a process that leads to customer delight. It will make it that someone would seek to get this product even if required to pay more. With my Camry car, the quality of manufacturing is very clear from the amount I pay for the annual service. The manufacturing is spot on and the reliability is very high. So it is also very clear that the design of the Mini is far luxurious and worthy of comment. My kid throws her next dart at me. “So, which one would you prefer to buy?” Image Source: web - Monster's Inc Movie Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities. -- R. David Lankes : Professor and Director of the School of Library & Information Science at the University of South Carolina Back in my childhood school days there used to be a period called Library. We had choices for reading. Magazines like Reader’s Digest, Nat Geo, etc. or Sportstar, Illustrated Weekly. Then there was a terror-looking madam known as the librarian. Her only duty was to keep the kids from tearing up the magazines and the silence in the room. I was lucky that my parents took me to the public and private libraries to read. So what has changed till now? Nothing. Let us look at history to understand it better. What is a public library? A public library is a place that is accessible to the public. Public sources usually funded it, such as taxes. A brief history does not hurt. |
AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
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