Posted on

Be Proactive – It’s not proactive, it’s how you react

(Note: This post is needs a lot of pause, heavy digesting, so read when you have time).

“You are not pro-active enough?” Did you say/hear this sentence? Does it help at all?

Recently we attended 7 Habits of effective people training session. Even after the session, many of us were still not clear about the new definition of “Be Proactive”, as we always used dictionary to define the word “Proactive”. Dictionary says, “Proactive is creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after”. So we feel Proactive is about creating something or preparing ourselves in such a way that we can avoid situations which can hurt us. There is nothing wrong with the definition, in fact thats the best definition to Proactiveness but in real life, you need more than perfect definition. I always believed that none of us can be 100% perfect. We can be prepared for most of things but still there are exceptional situtation (every now and then) and how we react to these exceptions help us lead a better life.

Step #1: Understanding what’s a real loss, very inspiring video

(Whats a real loss & Whats a challenge, great video to watch)

Old way we looked at Proactiveness

  1. Be prepared for exams beforehand than worrying about it during the last week – This is proactiveness
  2. Have a spare football for the football match, in case one goes off, you still have another one. This is proactiveness
  3. Having an assistant project manager as backup, so when a project manager is sick, project can run smooth – Best example of proactiveness (the plan B)

I see that the word “be proactive” is being used and abused in the corporate world. Every manager asks their teams to be proactive. When something goes wrong, we keep blaming someone (or ourselves) for not being proactive.

Let’s flush the old idea of Proactive, Please 

Why –

  • As the definition is not helping you at all.
  • We all want to prepare for better things but can’t be perfect 100% times. Everyone wants to be proactive but the reality is none of us can be 100% proactive.
  • Also it creates a guilt and hurts your confidence. Also it hurts your team as you start thinking others are not proactive enough.

Bridgestone DM-V2

New way of looking at “be Proactive”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rd7ReI5uqg

This video will clear a lot of things, here is another video that can help you understand another viewpoint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weYmwv2iyR8

The new way of looking at “be proactive” is “Let not your reaction kill you”, here are some of my old posts

  1. http://aji.techshu.com/my-death-wolf/ (How you are killing yourself while being a victim to your circumstance”
  2. I wrote about 90 10 principle, you can search for it on web. Its about 10% problems you can’t control but rest 90% problems are due to our wrong reactions.

Mindset Change

The most important thing here is to own your circumstance and understand you are here because of choices not because of others. Often we push everything to others.

When I worked at Grmtech, our boss Vikas will always tell me, “Either you can fall victim to your valid circumstances or win over it”, the victim vs victor attitude. This is step #1 to proactiveness.

  • Step #1, it was your choice, you made the choices, you end up here, now how will you react is proactiveness. Will you react looking forward or will you react looking backward? Thats the main difference between reactive reaction or proactive reaction.
  • Step #1.1: Oh, never regret for your choices as that was the best you could do at that time. Regretting and worrying will only change anything. Bible quote (Matt 6:27) “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?“
  • Step #2: Train yourself to reach pro-actively.
Now what is the principle. That’s an important question. There are 2 ways to above problem:
  • (Best, be prepared) Know that such situation will happen in any business and you can prepare with a process to ensure you react based on the process/principle defined.
  • (Second best, react right when not prepared) When you don’t have above solution ready, how will you react to it. Here are the steps:
    • Take a pause and see why it went wrong.
    • See if there is anyway we can help the client succeed.
    • If there is no way to save the project, how to make a graceful exit.
    • There are underlying principles that will help you react better like “Client’s business is more important than your account. See if it is hurting in anyway?”, “No disrespect for anyone”, “Relationship is more important than an account or money”, “Accept fault when it happens” etc. Now these principles needs to be written everyday and your brains should be trained for it. Having these principles ingrained in each one of your team member will help in reacting better, reacting pro-actively.
    • Also watch for language, don’t say, “You never co-operated with us, we asked you to do this, do that”, say “There were issues which together we could not fix on time. We own the problem, wish we could do better, still there are 10 to 15 things left to be implemented. Can you please get it implemented, we will help you get it implemented and then we will support you for next 3 months for free with reports and things undone.

Is it that easy?

No not all, thats why great companies are rare to find, they train their teams, themselves, the whole organization again and again to win over these difficult challenges. I was listening to Rata Tata Sir, when asked about values for an organization and how to enforce it at all levels, he said (in my own words and understanding) “You can’t take responsibility for behaviour of 400,000 employees but when someone does wrong/right, how you react to it will define your value”. WOW! it was a great learning.

What’s your definition to “being proactive” and what’s your take from this post

Posted on

How to fire employees? Firing employee? Firing employees? THE GUIDE

These days every now and then we hear about a friend/colleague getting fired or a company laying off its employees. Then the blame game phase, where the employer will blame the employees and the employees will blame the employer.

Firing employees is not easy

For any sane minded company (you should work with sane minded company only) firing is one of the most difficult part. I had interacted with some of the people for whom firing is just a way to improve his business. If somebody is not performing ask him to leave, thats all. Some people are good at firing, I am not. I have always struggled with firing employees and I have learned my lessons too. Firing is awful for the person doing the casting out and, surely, for the person being fired. Still it is important to let people go at times. I was a part of many discussions where we were passing the ball to each other for the firing announcement. I was also a part of the team that got fired. So I have been on both the sides of firing table and felt the heat exact same on both sides.

Why employees get fired

Just 4 reasons:

  1. For breaking laws.
  2. Non performance
  3. Economical problems
  4. Strategy changes by the company

Employees getting fired for breaking laws:

Now even this can be further divided into 2:

  • Being unethical: This is when people steal or cheat or sell off some proprietary things. This is highly unaccepted. In this case one doesn’t need to think twice. Hear the person, give a good and fast trial and call the fire alarm. In such firings it is important to announce the reason for firing really loudly. I remember a case with a very high profile US based company that started its operation in India. A senior person, very high performing person, was fired from the company for bribing the government officials for a contract. Company did get the contract. In any other company the person might have got appreciated with incentives as bribing is taken as a accepted practice in some part of the world. BUT this company wanted to make sure that its people understand the value behind its integrity, so fired the person loudly. Every person in the company got a mail with the reasons and was asked not to take this route ever. So in such cases do shout loud enough after firing. This will also settle the dust of confusion among the employees. Leave no place for gossips or misinterpretation after firing.
  • Breaking of other company rules: There can be other breaking of rules like coming late, or being arrogant to the seniors etc. In such cases I haven’t seen much of firing as most of the firing had non-performance as the real reason and breaking of company rules only as the surface reasons. In such cases before firing the person you need to give the person atleast 3 to 4 chances. Provide training to the person, assign a mentor and delegate the firing process to the mentor. After 3 to 4 chances do let go the person with proper explanations. Also it is advisable to clear this process with other employees. I will also suggest to drop a common mail to the company explaining the reasons and the process for such firing.

Firing employees for non performance

This is a much debatable topic when it comes to firing because of non performance. I have only seen few occasions when the person has accepted that he/she wasn’t performing. In most of the cases both the parties will disagree on the non-performance status. I recently interacted with a person who got fired from one of my known companies. I know their management really well. So he asked me, “Why did so and so fired me, I was one of the most performing person in the team and they fired me for non-performing”. I inquired and found many more reasons behind his firing including some level of politics (You know what I mean). But overall this guy wasn’t clear on “WHY I WAS FIRED FOR NON-PERFORMANCE”. There were instances were people were getting fired for non-performance and I advocated and mentored them. To the surprise of many they became the pillars to the company. Also there were instances when non-performers did not improve and did cost to the company because of my intervention.

With non-performance based firing one need to be very careful and make sure that their is no foul play involved. As in one of my previous post it mentioned that “People leave company because of their manager“, so can be the case with firing. There are many cases where the firing happened because the manager was not happy with certain thing (which can not be counted as non-performance at all), or the manager was feeling threatened because of the junis talent and so on. So in case of non-performance, let the HR department define the non-performance clearly. THE KEY IS CANDID. You need to be open to the employees as in what you mean by non-performance since performance is estimated based on results and results are depended on team work. At many times the job profile may not be well defined leading to non performance. Different people have different attitude towards work, some are task oriented or well-defined job description oriented, so you need to define their roles very preciously to avoid non-performance. A scrutiny of non-performance may also lead to improvement in work and work-flow processes.

In case of non-performance firing make sure that it doesn’t come to the person as a surprise. Let there be a complete open and candid process for such firing. (Also take it as lesson for your hiring, generally a lot of initial stage non-performance firing happens because of bad hiring)

Mass Employee firing due to economical problems

This can be really sad when all of a sudden the client flow dies off and the company find itself in a financial crisis. Company does try to fight back but at times nothing work out. In such cases, it is very important to involve the whole of the company to understand the problem and fight back. Recently I visited a CEO of a growing company, he explained me how his company went through financial crisis and how his employees helped him come out of it. In that conversation he did mention that he was very open to the employees about the financial crisis faced by the company. He attended few meetings with the whole team and explained them the issues faced by the company. Then everybody worked extra, analyzed the problems and brought the company out of financial crisis. In all possible cases one need to be very candid with the people in concern.

Even when the CEO explains the issues to the next level it sometimes doesn’t flow down to the core people group. CEO of the company need to ensure that the next level is passing on the information with the same intensity. I have access to some of the top companies in India and I have seen how their CEO sends regular group emails, be it a happy moment or a sad one (but most of these companies are tech companies and every employee has access to emails).

Point of the matter is that employer needs to involve the employee in these situations. Such layoffs should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Employee firing due to strategy changes by the company

This was another reason that I have personally witnessed where the company decided to stop a particular department as they felt it is not the right direction for the company. Such decisions can come out of management meetings and can hit the team as a surprise. But even in these cases company need to discuss with the team about such a move. After all success is all about fine tuning. It is easy to destroy but very difficult to create one. When the company shares its observations with the team then there can be a mutual discussion and sometimes it can come bring huge profit out of such departments and products. Even when the company need to take such decisions, it needs to make sure that the team members are given enough time to explore new opportunities in life.

Do not just delegate firing to the HR department

At many layouts and firing the top management is not at all seen, it is taken care by the HR department. Delegating layoffs or firing to the HR department is not very much advisable. I used to get involved in firing representing the management. Also CEOs and other senior members do jump in at serious firing cases. It is very important to involve the immediate managers and team members in the firing process. In some cases i will also advice the involvement of management including the CEO.

Overall summary on How to fire employees

  1. Make sure employees know the exact reason why they are getting fired.
  2. Make sure it doesn’t come to them as a surprise.
  3. Make sure you hear different version of the story before taking a decision. Allow fair trail.
  4. Make sure you don’t delegate firing to HR department alone.
Posted on

I poop therefore, I am

Guy’s always mentions about “Eat like a bird and poop like an elephant (Birds eat upto half of their size and Elephants poop 150 pounds a day)”. he also said “I poop therefore, I am”. He was the Evangelist at Apple and was into sharing a lot of things.

I poop therefore, I am

It is so important to give away for free. Many of us are too busy in “creating things like God” and “working like slaves” or even “demanding like Kings” but hardly have time to Poop (sharing it away for free).

I remember a Bible quotes (Ecc 11:1-3),

“Cast thy bread upon the running waters: for after a long time thou shalt find it again. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight: for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. If the clouds be full, they will pour out rain upon the earth. If the tree fall to the south, or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be.”

How true it is! People are not interested in free giving aways but are very interested in getting free give aways. Before giving we calculate the return whereas when we do what is needed the return does come. From my personal experience, Pooping is very useful for your career too (Long term).

Reasons why Pooping (Sharing for free) is useful

  1. Whom you know is more important than what you know: Pooping allowed me connect to a lot of like minded friends. Pooping allowed me to chat with industry experts. I got in touch with them when I pooped (sometimes free blog advices, sometimes free work etc) and we are still in touch.
  2. Pooping reflects what I ate: Only when I poop people will come to know what I am eating (or what I ate).
  3. It does bring gift too: Because of the free help that I provided I have got many many gifts. I got free memberships worth $150 per quarter, ppts of the latest seminars in US, great information and access to tools.
  4. It builds trust and customer: I got my first customer through a friend of mine who used to ask me questions on a web forum with different name. Because of your writing people can know more about you and trust you and your work.
  5. It makes you better: Only when you speak and share you are criticized and improved. There were many occasions when people have corrected my concepts. Even one of my earlier SEO mentor came in my life because of Pooping.
  6. Written pooping allows you to focus on new things: Blogs have saved me so much time. I write it once and then I forward the links for similar queries or trainings.
  7. Written pooping allows others to recommend you: A good blog of yourself do encourage others to recommend you to others.
  8. I poop there, I am: I pooped in an interview, took around 30 mins class so that the person can understand some important concepts. After few years the same person has brought me clients. He accompanies the person to our home.

So do poop freely and enjoy the best gift called LIFE.

Posted on

We always want cloning, big hinderance in life

This has been one of my personal learning in professional life esp at recruitment level. We always expect others to behave like us, work like we do, talk like we do and everything else possibly like a clone. This is so much against the rule of our own existence and identity. We all are given different circumstances and we all have our own learning and thus we all expect to act differently.

In my early days of interviews (way back in 2004-2005), I used to expect programmers to be of certain nature. I expected them to have certain backgrounds. I expected them to know few things. It wasn’t wrong until I realized the prejudice behavior in me. I would have judged the candidate even before they step in for interview. It almost stopped me from hiring a person with different talents, which was such a disadvantage for your team. I could come out of it really soon (thanks to the Church teaching and great books on HR).

There are people who want their clones everywhere, at office (all the people should dress in my own approved way, work and behave like me), at home (my wife, husband, father, mother, relatives should talk and behave as per my own set of rules) and at other places (friends should only do things that are permitted by my own laws).

Why expecting a clone is big hindrance in life?

  1. It certainly prevents you from getting diverse dimensions in your team/life.
  2. It prevents others to be free with you.
  3. It prevents you to acknowledge the good things done by others as you will always be busy comparing your clone properties with others.
  4. It certainly increases our prejudice level (have an Influenced opinion in advance).

Most importantly, it prevents you from being happy

Oh, bet on it! We will never be happy if we expect clones. We will never be happy with our relatives who will shout loud on a six and licks their hand after eating. During the whole span of interaction, we will keep looking for differences and will get annoyed with everything that doesn’t matches with our rules. I always smile at people who are working so hard to change their parents. It is their wish that their parents matches with their status (I don’t know for what reason). Personally, I also used to try (even today I try explaining things from my perspective) to change a lot with my parents, friends, teams etc but now I enjoy their uniqueness and will always allow them to be what they are comfortable with. I enjoy the way they are. I don’t have wrong expectations from them.

Enjoy the difference

We all are different and it is so important that we enjoy our differences (and learn from others). Now I have started enjoying the difference. I enjoy when our relatives at KFC will spill the burger filling here and there, I enjoy when my friends jump on my bed with their dirty legs (grrr…) ……

Hey after-all life is not about rules, rules are good but certainly life is not only about rules. Don’t get too much tied up with your own rules (expecting your clones everywhere), enjoy the differences and be happy that you have people who come and break your rules :).

Next video is a great video, Religion vs Jesus way (I will be writing about rules and the purpose of rules).

Posted on

What is more important, Personality or Character? Unprepared is the key

This has been a big debate for years. Personality gets the thing done, character adds the sincerity to it. (Please don’t confuse it with the moral character of a person :))

Let’s take two example to understand:

  1. Giving one speech: Person X can just memorize the speech, get the speech from someone else and practice it enough to look it really real. Judges are judging it on the basis of Person ‘s presentation skill (personality) irrespective of whether Person X feels a damn about the words spoken. Character is when the person puts his opinion that he/she feels is correct. Person Y may have worked in the field has a lot to say from real life examples and so on. (Who will win the competition?) (Probably Person X, I have written many speeches for people, when I write, I write it from my feelings but when the person says it, it is merely the presentation.)
  2. Donating food to poor: Person X is very well dressed in white and is put all the things to be labeled as the best spiritual leader. He distributes the food as he was accompanying a friend. Person Y is also very well dressed but he is doing it as he feels about the poor. (Was there any difference between feeling for poor and just showing off? Probably not)

In both the above example’s Person X and Person Y has used their personalities to do the work. The inner feeling can be termed as Character (motive/feeling behind the action). So is personality more important or character?

Now lets take Person X and Person Y again.

  1. Surprise Speech and Q&A: There was a surprise speech on a similar topic. Person X fall short of words and ideas whereas Person Y is more comfortable with the speech. Even in the Q&A, Person Y does better than Person X (assuming that none of them prepared for the Q&A sessions)
  2. Need volunteer for regular food distribution for poor local organization Who will volunteer for this poor local organization? Probably Person Y as Person X was doing it without much feeling and Person Y feels about poor.

    So what is more important personality of character?
    I always advocated for both. Personality is required for a short term with short conversation impact whereas without character personality can fade out soon. At many times you don’t need character level work (Example: Presentation on goat (assuming that you are not in a goat business)), you just need to prepare enough so that you can score good marks in this presentation.

    But you will have to learn at character level for your related topic. When a student of marketing put a presentation on niche marketing, the purpose behind the presentation is that the person learns niche marketing really well, he/she will have to learn it in deep. Even after the presentation the person should go back and learn it at a character level. If the student doesn’t learn it at character level then later in some stage he/she will face a surprise question on niche marketing with some goodies for effective answers. For the presentation you may not be able to learn niche marketing at character level, for the presentation you just need to do enough at personality level to get enough marks.

    What is personality and character?

    Personality is the part of action that gets the work done. Character is the part of action that works behind the action. Some important points about personality and character:

  1. Personality is what makes the character: When you visit the orphanage you may not feel anything but your personality (where you went to orphanage) helps you see a lot of things, experience a lot of things and then teaches your self (Character part) about the importance of working with them. When you visit again and again, you may start feeling it from inside. Another example is: When you read a book or topic, you may not understand it but reading it again and again can make you a master of it. Reading is personality and understanding it is character.
  2. Character alone is useless: What if you feel for poor (Character level) but never takes an action (personality) to help them. What if you understand the subject like nobody else (Character level) but can’t explain it or use it (personality level).
  3. Personality alone is dangerous: A girl with great make up without original beauty can surprise her admirers when seen without a makeup. Doing makeup is good (personality level) but take care of things like health, drinking water, eating habits etc (that makes the beauty) is required for long term and true beauty (Character). So one will have to do makeup when required but one must be more careful in there day to day activities to develop a true beauty.
  4. Character doesn’t need preparations: When you know the subject and you have good presentation skills (Presentation skills again has to be at character level, not just for one speech but for any speech, it is developed slowly slowly), you can present yourself without any preparations.
  5. Character is the difficult part of both: Personality can be achieved quickly whereas character takes a lot of time to develop. You can learn how to distribute food to poor but make you feel for poor is a difficult and time taking job.
  6. Character is more desired: Character is more desired as a man with character can be taught the personalty but not vice-verse.
  7. Don’t be discouraged for character: I don’t feel good about the subject so whats the point in learning it. This is a common question. We all went through this at times but after reading it for a while (without much understanding) we started feeling it. There are many who comes to Church/Temple just for fun but someday the start feeling about it. There continuous actions (personality) taught their inner self(Character). So never get discouraged about not having the character just keep working with personality and keep focusing on developing character. When we worked in SEO field, at times we did not understand what we were doing, we just did what was instructed to us. BUT WE WENT BACK HOME AND LEARNED THE WHY PART OF WORK. So slowly we started developing the character.

Final word: Personality is very much required to get the work done. Character is very much required for long term and for unprepared times (Unprepared is the key, so keep developing everything at character level)

Posted on

Not happy? Best formula for happiness (With calculator)

I see our driver going really crazy when it is 9pm. He gets off most of the day, he comes at 9:30 am and goes back and only returns at 6:00 pm. He gets a lot many free hours (even sometimes just 30 mins of work in a day) but still on Sunday (or Saturday sometimes) he need to work for 12 hours (that is what he is paid for, contract says 12 hours per day).

There are many people who gets frustrated (including you and me). Is there a way out? Yes ofcourse. Are you getting frustrated at office? Are you frustrated because you have to work extra hours? Are you frustrated because you are not paid well?

Are you unhappy because …..

  1. your pay is less
  2. you need to work extra
  3. your quality of job is not good
  4. your family is not spending time with you.
  5. or some other reasons

We are unhappy because we are expecting wrong

For all the unhappiness and frustrations, I have only one reason. Wrong expectations. Let’s take an (real) example:

Mr X was really happy with his 30k per month salary, he was in one of the top bands in the company. His happiness turned to unhappiness in just a single day when he talked to his 2 friends about the salary. Both of them got lucky and grabbed an opportunity in a new MNC for 90k per month. When Mr X compared his salary with his friends to see a difference of 60k, he was just not ready to go happy. Did anything change in the world except Mr X’s expectations?

It happens even more often when we visit our relatives and friends. We start expecting a bigger car, bigger house, better family relationships, bigger happiness, better kids and so on.

Is it wrong to expect something better?

No, not at all! Not at all! There is nothing wrong in expecting something better but it is absolutely wrong not to expect something lower than your expectations.

It is good to expect an AC room to work but it is not right to not to expect a non-AC room for work. It is good to expect a good job but it is not right to not expect a non-job period.

What is needed Vs What is expected

Because of my loans I need close to Rs 25000 per month to live ok but my expectation per month is Rs Rs 1,00,000 (as my previous salary was something like this). If I live on my expectation I won’t be happy untill I earn 1,00,001 but if I live on what is needed (the most minimal expectation) then I will certainly we quite happy with Rs 30,000 per month. So I am currently focusing on Rs 30,000 per month by teaching students and doing other things (for atleast 2 months).

We compare with one parameter when our lives are with multi-dimensions

I had talks with many people (even my parents) who come over comparing one good thing about somebody. Example: “See how rich their kids are” or “See how studious are monu and sonu”. If you are ask back “How happy are their parents with the richness of their kids?”, “How often do they meet together?”, “How healthy are they?” and so on ….. “How bad are monu and sonu at parties?” “How bad are monu and sonu at football” and so on …

Mr X in the above example did not compare working hours, did not even compare with other friends to get a better picture of market salary.

Generally we compare and put our expectations on the best things from 100s of people we meet. We want to be rich like Bill Gates and privacy as our next door neighbors. We want beauty as Ash and eating habits like a foodie.

3 tips to go happy (more tips will follow)

  1. Setting the right expectation: You need to cross check your expectations and redo some. Religious people go unhappy when they fall sick (or something bad happens to them) as they were not expecting it from God.
  2. Reduce the loss: We all go unhappy for any loss, loss of our family time, loss of money, material etc. I was standing in an Auto Rickshaw stand when one of my junior jumped in front of me. He called a taxi and pushed me in, we talked and went on. He got down after sometime and offered me money but I refused to take (Life is more than money, right 🙂). I was on a tight budget. I got down home and felt unhappy for Rs 120 (don’t remember the exact amount, something like 120). Then I calculated my usual expense (Rs 10 + 5 + 5 = Rs 20), then calculated the friends expense (Rs 10, which I had to pay anyway). Since it was raining, so I had to spend more than usual may be another 20. So over 50 I had to spend anyway. So my loss is 120-50 = 70. Which is ok :), so you can reduce the loss at times by recalculating few things.
  3. Writing down the trouble list: If you can write the list of issues that are troubling you then you can solve it even easily by setting a new expectation for each of the item in the list.

Coming back to driver

Driver can go happy if he expects that in 3 days he will have to work over 12 hours and rest 4 days he will have to work for just 2 hours a day. He will be much happy person in life. I used to do this at office. I always expected that I need to leave at 8pm (instead of 7pm) and every time I left at 7:45pm, I was happy that I am leaving early.

Share your own go happy tips

Posted on

There is Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Mumbai, Delhi terrors

I keep hearing that Terror has no religion, terror has no states, terror has no faces. Most of these sentences are by Politicians who counts on one community or the other and don’t want to leave the other communities as well. According to me such statements and believes are no solution. IT IS THE RIGHT TIME that the world understands that there is Hindu Terror, there is Muslim Terror, there is Christian Terror and also there is Mumbai or Delhi Terrors. Even there in Indian terror, Afghanistan terror, (any country) terror.
Face of terror

Once you are subjected to regular attacks, rejections, humiliations for being a part of a religion A by another religion B makes you hate the other religion B irrespective of who did it or who represented religion B. As a Muslim if one is subject to rejections or humiliations all the time by other religions then it fills up a lot of hatred inside the person for other religion. If one stays in Orrisa and being attacked for being a Christian, he/she will always look for revenge. There can be valid/invalid reasons, but it is no fair to generalized the reasons and attack everybody. In this process, revenge is taken but it turns more innocent minds to Hatred.

I always believed that Love and Hate has the power to build and destroy anything, including their own lives. As Love is subject to do anything so is hatred subject to do anything. If Love is blind so is Hatred. These people who once were innocent are now used by Extreme elements of our society for BAD ,the reason Hatred. If you study or watch movies, be it Poolan devi or any other person, they all have their own stories to tell. No one goes there and die or kill for no reasons. It is true that one step in dark may have lead one to do many more darker things, where he/she might not have direct links.

Tomorrow some of the people from Bihar who are attacked in Mumbai (Doesn’t matter who did it) will attack back some Mumbaikars (Doesn’t matter which mumbaikars). MNS or whoever was involved has sown the seeds of hatred towards mumbiakars, now some anti-social element will use it for developing their strengths. Some of the Christians who lost their loved ones in Orrisa might hit back Hindus (Doesn’t matter, whether you were a part of the group that attacked Christians in Orrisa or not). If Indians are humiliated in other countries, some will bear it, some will retaliate it and some will take strong steps motivated by their hatred.

This hatred is not limited to a religion or a state. When it is concerned with a small group they act in a small way but when it is concerned with a bigger group, it goes really big.

Who is Osama

Who is Osama(s) and what he(they) can do

Some out of these will become leaders (for valid or invalid reasons), they will inspire more to join, they will create a team, they will create another power. Now when these individuals are powered by such powerful organization (which is nothing but the group of people with valid or invalid reasons towards hatred) it becomes major threats. These organizations will then offer incentives to join their group in terms of money (People who don’t have money have hatred towards people who have money, now they also wants to join the party of rich guys by doing something for one time but unfortunately there is no time). Such organizations will keep forming. In recent times if you see there are smaller organizations getting involved in bigger attacks. With new communication models, smaller groups will gain more power.

Now what is the step forward. Do we go for an eye for an eye, turning the whole India and the world blind? Do we keep saying that there is no Muslim terror? Do we say that there is no Hindu terror? We are the reason for terror too:

  • Do not generalize: If a Muslim/Hindu/Christian attacks that doesn’t mean all Muslims/Hindus/Christians are bad. You don’t be responsible in creating another terrorist out of an innocent Muslim/Hindu/Christian. If you do, your loved ones will bear the consequences.
  • Religious leaders are criminals: If you belong to any religion and leads it upfront then you are responsible for the religion too. You need to start a movement in educating people, spreading love not hatred. People take religion and religious leader very seriously. I would have been more than happy if the front page of every newspaper is fully of Muslim/Hindu/Christian Relgious leaders explaining how their religion condemns killing innocent people. They need to take the step in educating people.
  • Love is larger than hatred: People with hatred need to find a place in society with love. We need to address the issues at local and global levels. Bring people towards talk.
  • Biggest failure – Our faith is judiciary and security systems:
    Supreme court
    We have almost lost faith in our judiciary system, the law itself is failing. It is being influenced by powerful elements of the society. Powerful people uses their power to suppress the ordinary people. Then these ordinary people become terrorists to suppress the powerful people. (Remember all the movies we saw, where a leading actor plays an anti role). Our judiciary and security system needs to become more independent and powerful. It is made for people who can’t speak not just for the one whose power can speak.
  • Don’t be rigid: Does your God tells you to kill an innocent fellow? Go ahead and reject the GOD. It is not God who is telling you to do it, it is this Bloody NON religious people who are using religion to corrupt you. We need to be aware and spread this awareness to new generations.
  • Trust the law or live in lawless land: When you decide as an individual to take law in your hand, you are termed criminal and the whole land fights against you but when the representatives of larger/stronger land takes the law in their hands it makes the land lawless. We don’t allow extremists. If people burns Indian flags in Kashmir then react, initiate the talks. If needed pluck the corrupt ones.
  • Power is for responsibility if used otherwise it is terror: Many people think that power means A STRONGER WORD, no it means more responsibility and authority for organization. The time you use the power without responsibility or to suppress something irresponsibly, it creates terror. Haven’t we heard of Terror from Bosses? In office, we are subject to hierarchies, we are paid for being lower but society we all are equal.

What God says

Religion is all about inhuman love, patience, forgiveness and suffering

How difficult is to forget a person who does something wrong to you? Very difficult. It is the religion that can help people show the perfect (sometimes a little inhuman) love, patience, forgiveness and suffering. We all are selfish people (may be once you reach self-realization stage, a little lesser), even the top most spiritual leaders. Some people forgive others because as they are told that there is reward in heaven for such love, forgiveness and suffering. It gives you power to suffer, teaches you to love others. Religion should teach these things. Religion is not about visiting God in Churches or temples at times, it is about understanding the way God wanted earth to be, a place for living in harmony. If you understand religion and believes that there is only one God then do remember that the same God has created the person whom you are going to hurt. Will a mother ever teaches her kid to kill other for any reason, how then can one expect God or religion to do so. Don’t get fooled by religious teachings, you learn your own religion.

There is more to write but this is the time when our Governments and people in charge wake up and realize that their is religious, state based terrors. If we don’t stop it then there will be more terrorist and attacks. Lets make it a point that we don’t hate somebody for being a part of community or state.

Posted on

neoligism: smartcut – User smartcut not shortcuts

Today I was writing the education email for dawebmarketing client’s (It’s a weekly affair) and coined this word “smartcut”. I don’t know if anyone has ever used it but Google define doesn’t have it for sure.

If shortcut is to take the shortest route then smartcut is to take the smartest route. I will always recommend using smartcuts than shortcuts for all arenas of life. Shortcuts may not be smartcuts all the time and smartcuts will give you long term benefits.

Wow, just a small post. Looking forward for your comments.

Posted on

Prabhat – A true story of admin Linux

Title of the story: Only one extra ordinary quality is enough to become extra ordinary.
I feel lucky as I was privileged enough to meet many ordinary people with extra ordinary qualities. Prabhat Kumar aka admin linux is one such person. I remember him when he visited Grmtech for a placement visit, where he explained his work at his Summer job. After talking to him, I felt he will be able to help us with an IE toolbar. Also I had a previous experience working together on “Dalal Street” application during our AIMK days. He was a great help working throughout the night to finish the whole application in 2 days nights. With all previous experience I called him for interview and he was able to do well in the interview. He got selected.

He was no extra ordinary guy, he studied in average Hindi medium schools for many years. All I knew was that he was hard working, he showed his hard work all the time. He was recruited as a programmer but he always showed interest in Server administration. I must accept that in the initial days I had no faith in him for server administration. His communication skills were as high as 1/10. Even with all his limitations and barriers, he kept his interest in server management. He kept involving in some work or the other. After seeing his interest we decided to give him the job of System administration. He was guided by our boss (who is amazingly great with networking and server management). Even after handing over the responsibility, I had doubts but he was always confident. He kept working working and working (His greatest strength) without listening to other vibes but to his own which said you can. Not only he worked and learned but got up early morning 5’oclock to finish his international certification for Red hat and Oracle (Some more certifications). He was hardworking and kept working hard to see himself at a very better position. His communication skills are improved, and his knowledge level is great (now we call him to sort out our networking issues). All became a possibility because he decided to use his only quality, the quality of hard working to earn and sharpen other invisible qualities.

I congratulate him for his latest certification and even more I congratulate him for his quality of hard working, may God bless you. And I want to leave a note for others that things are possible but one will have to work hard too.

Posted on

If you think you are ……, you are

Olympics time and here is a beautiful message. Got this message today, it is really nice. Have you wondered why it is so important? We will look into some of this after you enjoy the beautiful lines.

You are a winner if you think so

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, then you won’t.
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
it is almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out of the world we find,
success begins with a fellow’s will–
it’s all in the state of the mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are–
you’ve got to be sure of yourself before
you can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
to the stronger or faster man,
but sooner or later the man who wins
is the man who thinks he can.

I will let you define why it matters, why your thinking matters. Enjoy! (For a lighter node, don’t miss http://www.monsterindia.com/smile/ and http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html)