Soulful Designs

Steve Jobs was not much good at studies. You might call him a drop out. But he was a smart kid. He was capable of intense vision. He was rather crazy but was looking for excellence and commitment in everything he did. Thus came ‘Apple’.
You look at Apple’s products. The Apple icon has exceeded the world excellence. Why because he poured his soul on it. We are lucky that as consumers we can touch and feel his presence in every product he reinvented for us.
Apple’s products commemorate the passing away of their founder. In no way will the world surely forget such a legend that was able to reach the maximum of his existence through his excellent products made. Steve Jobs once said: "Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service." His designs were expressively soulful.
A true brain of the Apple entity, Steve Jobs never aimed to compete with his contemporary corporates. In fact, he was continuously reinventing. To make our life much better.
He believed that if you ask for what you want, you often get it. He asked for new products he wanted. And he got it from nowhere. With thorough attention, he modified them to suit the future requirements. He was a visionary thinking much ahead of time.
Once people were not considered civilized unless they knew how to write. Now civilization means people’s ability to use Ipods, Ipads or Iphones. It is Steve Jobs who created the new civilization. The different forms of communicating today are all derived from these creations.
Steve, thanks for the world you created with your soulful designs!

Soulful Designs

Steve Jobs was not much good at studies. You might call him a drop out. But he was a smart kid. He was capable of intense vision. He was rather crazy but was looking for excellence and commitment in everything he did. Thus came ‘Apple’. Yes, the third apple in the history of mankind.
You look at Apple’s products. The Apple icon has exceeded the world excellence. Why because he poured his soul on it. We are lucky that as consumers we can touch and feel his presence in every product he reinvented for us.
Apple’s products commemorate the passing away of their founder. In no way will the world surely forget such a legend that was able to reach the maximum of his existence through his excellent products made. Steve Jobs once said: "Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service." His designs were expressively soulful.
A true brain of the Apple entity, Steve Jobs never aimed to compete with his contemporary corporates. In fact, he was continuously reinventing. To make our life much better.
He believed that if you ask for what you want, you often get it. He asked for new products he wanted. And he got it from nowhere. With thorough attention, he modified them to suit the future requirements. He was a visionary thinking much ahead of time.
Once people were not considered civilized unless they knew how to write. Now civilization means people’s ability to use Ipods, Ipads or Iphones. It is Steve Jobs who created the new civilization. The different forms of communicating today are all derived from these creations.
Steve, thanks for the world you created with your soulful designs!

      Deciphering the Leadership Enigma

 

The common denominator  in   Enron’s Kenneth Lay and Microland’s Pradeep Kar was that they were dynamic motivators to their team-mates.  They were leaders and some how  both lost their enigma somewhere in the race. They  were deposed from their ruined  empires. 

But some leaders  are self motivated to the extent that they do not compromise with  values, aspirations and performances.  They continuously lead and motivate  their people.  They are  experts in motivaging. Indeed,  for them,   the magic wand  still continues to swirl.  For example, though   Steve   Perlman’s earlier effort, Web TV, never took off the way he hoped,  his new venture,  Moxi Digital, is supposed to be  Microsoft’s competitor in the battle to ‘digitize, simplify and supercharge’ home entertainment. He believed that his employees are  competent to make his efforts fruitful.  Similarly  Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing’s Tom.com, the biggest publisher of print media in Taiwan,   is the favourite to become the sole Chinese advertising agent for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.   For Perlman and  Ka-shing  these are possible  only because they are leaders with  tremendous  potential;  they are supportive and approachable to their colleagues; they   are motivated to pursue their  efforts to be nmero uno  in the corporate game.

 Everybody agrees that Lay, Kar, Perlman and Ka-shing are business leaders with different motivations and aspirations of the corpocracy. The first two were regarded  as successful until they had been otherwise revalued; the others are still viewed as successful motivators. We know,  successful leaders are often romanticized these days. Ostensibly they are   celebrities; rather businestars. In the corporate galaxy there are Super Businestars like Iacocca, Gates, Wagner, Jack Welch, Ratan Tata,  Narayana Murthy etc.    They  encouraged their people to perform to the best and  ultimately they  reaped results.

Unfortunately there are also   super leaders  who are struggling with the mundane  ‘successor syndrome’.  If they are not  intuitive,  imaginative, capable of motivaging  and  are skeptical  the trauma is severe.  They may experience their successor’s  entry and efforts as implicit criticism or a threat to their legacy. They  may also find it unexpectedly difficult to let go off the reins of power. One of the recent example was    in  Viacom, whose properties include CBS, MTV and Paramount studios.   Sumner Redstone, founder Chairman and CEO of Viacom,  declared that he would not renew the contract of   Mel Karmazin, who had been widely regarded as Redstone’s successor.  He disliked Karmazin’s  ‘aggressive style’.    Contrarily in GE,  the intuitive  Welch  named Jeffrey Immelt, who was with  GE’s Medical Systems unit,   as heir to the  throne. 

What is the secret of the  success of the Superleaders?   Undoubtedly we would say that  the secret is  STATUS.  Yes,  STATUS- if they are Supportive, Tolerant, Approachble, Trusting, Understanding and  Suplementing.

• Supportive – Encourages his team-mates to reach in new directions, without challenging their individual objectives.
• Tolerant  - Allows a reasonable margin of error and  advises to make it  right  without affecting  the group performance.
• Approachable – Considers other’s   ideas for implementation even if it is contradictory and encourages for offering new ideas.
• Trusting - Allows people to make their own commitments and accepts  them as  the group responsibility.

• Understanding- Tries to help others by empathizing with their emotional motivations.

• Supplementing – Helps others  to perform well to reach goals by providing adequate space in the performance plateau.

Future corpocracy requires leaders  with STATUS.  If they are    competent to motivate their people  to remodulate   the organization in complacent with the aspirations of the generations ahead, they  can gleam forever.  Learn from the super stars  of  the corporate galaxy.

Retaining the Work Force

According to Kelly Global Workforce Index, chances that Indian employees say they are happy or very happy in their current jobs are 66 in 100.  That means,  more than fifty per cent our work force  is satisfied in their job including working  environment.  India ranked 7 among 28 countries worldwide in terms of employee satisfaction.

Employees sincerely work for the organization which  provides them the most valuable employment offer.  Money, recognition, involvement, affiliation, career prospects etc,, are some of the factors on which organization can build employee satisfaction.   

How do we keep employees committed to the organization?  Of course, by continuous  stimulation.  Motivation is an important factor in keeping employees stimulated. Motivated employees will not usually leave their organisations for simple reasons.  In a  recent study in Gas Authority of India Ltd. it is observed  that  organisational motivation plays an important role in employee retention.

Some of the factors that motivate employees include :

Ø      Recognition

Ø      Financial Incentives

Ø      Co-operation of the Boss

Ø      Job Security

Ø      Peer relationship

Ø      Responsibility and Authority

Ø      Challenging job

New generation organizations use Self Managed Work Teams (SMWT) as a  successful motivational tool.  SMWTs usually result in the increased flexibility, reduction in response time, reduction in working process inventory, early detection of defects,  improved quality, and increased pride in workmanship.  Members of  SMWTs  have the autonomy to diagnose problems, collect required date, experiment with new ideas and implement their  own solutions.   Generally SMWTs are natural work units composed of five to fifteen people, which produce a whole product and  provides a complete service.  In other words each team is a small business unit into itself.  SMWTs  offer a feeling of recognition, peer relationship, responsibility and authority, and co-operation of the boss. No employee leaves an organization if he feels that he is important.

 Gleaming  into Chaos

What the city's inhabitants are allowed to do with the city?  A turbulent societal structure to attract world attention?

All persons who live in the city either permanently or in transit are citizens. 

We call Thiruvananthapuram as a city, and the people  who live here are citizens.  And our  citizens are privileged to wait at the Bus Stops, to drive their cars and bikes through the gutters and trenches, to throw away garbage indiscriminately at places of their own choice …. 

Remember, all the city’s inhabitants are not able to claim that it is their own city. Being the capital city, lot of people are migrated to the city from different parts of the State for employment. Those who  are able to find their livelihood are settled here as their second-home.  And recently workers from West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Orissa, etc  are seen migrating in bulk to Thiruvananathapuram.  A lot of construction work is going in and around the city, as part of development. We are becoming a metro, trying to compete with Bangaluru or Mumbai, in all its chaos.   

Every city is a mere locality, which accommodates nomads, travelers, strangers, visitors etc. We also are not an exception.  As in the case of other cities, Thiruvnanthapuram  has failed  from detaining the illegal immigrants. Thanks (?) to our cultural heritage, which boasts ‘athidhi devo bhava!’. 

During 2002 World Social Forum had sponsored a ‘Seminar for the Human Right to the City.’  And in  early 2003,  their contentions were documented entitled World Charter for the Human Right to the City.  According to the 2003 document, cities represent much more than physical space distinguished by a higher density of living space.  We agree that Thiruvananthapuram is becoming much more than a physical space distinguished by the higher density of population.  We need more chaos, disorder, turmoil, and anarchy  … To make our city equivalent to any advanced cities in the world, let us  reduce our mental spaces.