It's not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change -- Charles Darwin, Scientist We live in an era of constant change. Take, for example, even the virus CORONA has changed itself so many times in the last 18 months. Business, economy and materialism are always on the change. As they change, expectations are that the actors in the system also change seamlessly. How is that possible? Yes, if you don’t, you perish. Thus everyone tries to change. Is that change easy? My straight answer is No, it’s tough. Why? What they are demanding is a change which is very personal. Competencies that are all quiet, innate to oneself. We refer to it as “Soft Skills”. What are they? Soft skills include your ability.
The list is endless. I know most of you would have heard all these comments at least once in a financial year. Yes, during your appraisal feedback. The underlying problem is that everyone understands that importance but does nothing about it. Neither the education system nor the society framework nor parental guidance act. They do nothing to inculcate these skills during the formative years of the person. I am tempted to blame the education system at large for this mess. They take pains to make me understand Newtonian physics. Also, Einstein’s relativity, the structure of Streptococcus. In fact, who killed Aurangzeb and when did the battle of Plassey take place. Yet do nothing to improve my soft skills. They need to invest in improving one’s soft skills at school or college level. It’s left to the student’s responsibility. In the rat race of marks, these obviously take the back seat. OK, I got the problem, but how do we solve it?
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Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them - John C. Maxwell The current community trends shows very negative information floating around. It projects data as though the communities are becoming more and more self-centered and individualistic. I tend to agree with this generalization to an extent. We have become a lot self-centered than we were 30 years back. I do not want to delve on the WHY part but want to see how to improve the situation. With this as a background I did some research on how to change the way a community works. I wanted to get people to do more work such as getting them to come out on VOTE on election day, save water in their houses, give more to deserving charities, consume less electricity and finally keeping the office pantry clean by not washing their lunch boxes with left overs. In my current work place I tried to get many of the people to reuse the one-side printed papers and also to try and reduce the number of papers used in the printers. In order to get this program going, we introduced new initiatives and processes. It was all good but there was an inherent weakness in the system: PEOPLE. People needed to adopt this initiative for it to become a success. We made many colourful posters and employee reward programs for using less paper but I was not successful. The number of people who signed up for this initiative was very less but everyone kept saying it was a great initiative. So I went back to the drawing tables with a select team to think on how to get more participation. One of the members in the team suggested a small change. Instead of sign up portals, posters and email registrations, we just put up a small sign-up sheet near the printers and asked them to give their Name, employee number and sign it. Within a week the participation doubled. Wondering WHY?. I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience. This is a quote by Quentin Tarantino, the Italian born American director. What struck me the most with this quote was his definition of who the audience are. I liked the way of equating the audiences with himself. This is the first step that one needs to act if they are trying to draw audiences to their content.
According to HubSpot, more than 40% of the blog readers admit to just skimming through the blog posts and never care to finish the entire content. So what is the problem that we are facing? Everyone is aware that it is very difficult to write and in today's blog world it is extremely hard to find a tribe for your contents. In this harsh condition, it is imperative for the authors to keep his followers on the toes always. That's a task to do and the blogging community faces this problem without an idea of how to crack the audience attention code. This draws us to a more deeper question - Why is it necessary to keep their attention? You write a blog since you wish to communicate certain information that you have. If readers are least interested in the content, then you will loose interest in writing further. So in order to maintain the levels of your motivation, there is need for your audiences to be engaged. Now comes the difficult question - how engaging should the contents be? Every bit of your contents should be engaging. It should cause enjoyment to the reader while reading and once finished should evoke some feelings or thoughts in them. If you are struggling to do this, fear NO more. For I have some practical tips that have worked for me and a lot of others. Why not explore them now? AR Rehman is a legend by himself and I am a great fan of him. It's been 20 years since he burst into the scene through Roja and has enthralled 2 vastly different generations - one which saw the sunset of Maestro Illayaraja and the other which grew up with him. So he had a tough time in convincing the older generations that his music was not synthesized and perhaps he wanted to differentiate from the Illayaraja school of live orchestra recording. He not only introduced a new way of composing but also infused a lot of technology into the field. There is now always a comparison between him and his predecessors and have come to a stage that we call it as IB and RA: Illayaraja and before, Rehman and after. There is a vast difference between the 2 timelines and maybe a fault-line is running over it waiting to shake the industry. Many new and young composers have entered the race and have started to make a name for themselves but yet Rehman remain the king of them all. Every legend composer have come into this industry by disrupting the previous one and have taken the bar to the next level. Rehman displaced Illayaraja and has reigned since 1990 but the new kids who have come have not yet been disruptive or the same standard as Rehman. What they are doing now is not making anyone who likes music very confident. Having said all these, there is still a small doubt inside me if Rehman has indeed opened the floodgates to all composers and in the doing so has he started the decay of Tamil film music. Let me elaborate on this point. We are in the world of internet where insult has become the easiest choice of weapon. Internet trolls are the best example for my point. Competitors use them to get us off our game. Everyone at some point of time uses insults especially when they feel insecure or threatened. Negative feedback is required but insults are not designed for help, it is designed to hurt the other person. There are many effective ways to handle insults and one of the best which comes to my mind comes from an unlikely source: Co-founder of Apple Computers, Steve Jobs. In 1977, Jobs had just returned back to Apple where he was ousted a decade ago. He was answering questions for developers at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference when one audience member took a shot at him: "Mr. Jobs, you're a bright and influential man," he begins. "Here it comes," responds Jobs, as both he and the audience giggle. Then, the famous insult: "It's sad and clear that on several counts you've discussed, you don't know what you're talking about. I would like, for example, for you to express in clear terms how, say, Java and any of its incarnations addresses the ideas embodied in OpenDoc. And when you're finished with that, perhaps you can tell us what you personally have been doing for the last seven years." Ouch. For most of us, such a public attack as this one would have left us a lot flustered. But Jobs's response is a perfect demonstration of what to do in those situations. Here are some highlights of lessons which I learnt . |
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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