Way we see things

We often ask, why can't they see the obvious.
What is obvious to us, is not necessarily obvious to others. 

A man is usually stretched between two women, both who who desire to monopolise him. The mother and the wife. The affection they have for the man is of different types, but yet he must belong to them both. Both women are right but not entirely.

This is because we recognise things, events, relationships and experiences through the window and filter of our mind. We like to believe that we exist in the reality but in fact we exist within a reality. We exist within a reality  created by our own mind. It is a reality created by our own minds with us at the very centre of our universe.

Everyone's centre and hence universe and therefore our reality differs. Great communicators seek to step out of their own realities and seek to place themselves in the hearts and minds of the other. 
All great souls and minds, have this ability to empathise. They may not agree with our reality, but at least they understand and accommodate the other.

Many families and organisations break up because the members and leaders do not take the effort to inculcate this way of understanding. No great endeavour can be achieved and sustained without this great quality of empathy.

Why this happens, will be the subject of another article.

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From my seminar on 'Effective Communication & Conversation'

Why is it so delicious?

My wife had served us a delicious meal and my thoughts flashed back to my mother.

I had gone to meet my mother as I often did. As always with folded hands, I bowed to mother and touched her feet. Gripping me by the shoulders she picked me up and  embraced me. The glowing delight on her face was all encompassing.

After a brief update, she stood up and said, "You must be hungry? Let me get you some lunch. It's hot out there, you must be thirsty, what would you like to drink?"

Mothers are always happy to see their children. After they see them, all they think of is feeding their offspring. They see their child, and instantly they want to stuff food into their child's mouth.

Love and food. Two of human beings very important nutrients. Delicious served unconditionally with a smile and for free. All they want is our time and attention.

Mother darted into the kitchen asked her maid to help her and shooed me out of the kitchen. In a little while, the aroma of the cooking tickled my nose and palette.  Presto! there was some irresistible and delicious food for me to eat. I simply wolfed it down and then some more. 

Whatever mother cooked, it was so tasty, even the most common of dishes were transformed into something delicious. My wife Mohini too is a fantastic cook, particularly when she is cooking for her sons. 

I couldn't but help think, 'Wow! Mother's are so special. They love and respect us even when our behaviour makes us unworthy of their devotion'.  

I recalled one evening, when I was a young man, our mother had served our father and all of us a tasty meal. After dinner my father asked us," Did you ever think about,  why your mother's cooking is so delicious?"

The questioned gnawed at me. So whenever I ate my mother's cooking, I thought about it. I nagged mother to tell me, but she just laughed it off. I tried to study what it was that she was doing, and try to understand the secret. After a year I gave up and asked Dad. 

His explanation was life changing. "Your mother adds a secret ingredient, and its called love. Whenever someone prepares food with love which inevitably a mother, and often a lover, wife, daughter, sister, granny or aunt do, the food is always delicious".

To the modern mind preoccupied with materialism, and the compulsive need to count and measure everything, the concept of love and friendship appears rather naive and old fashioned. 

Love and friendship are anything but matters of fashion, they were, they are and they will remain the essence of a meaningful life.

I have learnt through these experiences that, 

Anything done with love, passion and commitment is bound to be extraordinarily and rich.

My Dream. Your Dream. Our Dream.

Demonstrating leadership by, thinking what you believe, saying what you think, and doing what you say.

In 1985 two leaders from Bendix Corporation a leading American company, came visiting to our manufacturing facilities.They sensed that we wanted to achieve something outstanding in our field but could simply not describe it. Allan suggested we should aim to be a 'World Class Company'.

At that time no one even spoke of something so audacious. The concept sounded fantastic and next day we brothers met and discussed the concept. We adopted the vision to be 'A World Class Organisation'.

In the following week at a meeting of all our staff we made the announcement. Guess what? Our team just looked at us blankly. We were appalled, how could they not be excited about this fantastic vision? They were aghast that we should dream of something so audacious when we faced great struggles daily on countless matters big and small.

Thank God a brave man asked, "Sir, what exactly do you mean by World Class?" 

We brothers looked at each other and now we looked more confused than our staff. We had adopted a concept given to us by someone else, shot into action completely clueless of what our vision actually meant.

Returning to our office, we spent 3 months in discussions,  trying to figure out what that one statement really meant to us and to our people in which there were no doubts.

We finally concluded that as a business organisation we needed to find, retain and service customers profitably while providing value to them.

We adopted the philosophy; 

1. Look after the customers who are the purpose of our existence, by always providing them superior quality products and services, 

2. Look after the employees who actually make it possible to achieve things

3. Look after the shareholders and investors by providing superior returns on their investments

4. Look after the communities in which you exist and function in.

Now we called another meeting with our team. They listened and this time there was some more interaction. Even surprises and shock.

We mistook shock to be caused by the daring vision. In fact as subsequent private discussions with them showed that they thought we were mad.

Insane not because of the challenge before us but by our sheer audacity of proposing something so great while we were actually doing so badly on so many of the things that we wanted to change.

Hardly anyone believed us. It is then we learnt that the greatest resistance to change was 'Management Credibility'. They had learnt from our organisation and others where they had worked that managements say things without meaning them, rarely keep promises, and will only exploit you.

How could we convince them that we believed that the the interest of the employees and employers were one and the same and based on taking care of the interests of all stakeholders with sincerity?

Nothing seemed to work and now we risked looking like fools. 
Thank God, we had the counsel of several people and the most remarkable was our friend Nana Shahane.

Nana highlighted an important term used both for God, and father in Indian culture is 'Anna -Datta', meaning the one who provides us. Now rarely used but in earlier times even the employer was called Annadatta.

We learnt that you cannot expect people to give your their best if they feel uninvolved, disrespected, unloved and denied their fair share. We learnt that we had to shift from the accepted norm of highly exploitive capitalistic model to that of being a family. Not just any ordinary family but a well trained, disciplined, highly motivated continuously improving family working as a team to achieve our vision.

It took a couple of years to start winning trust, but once our people, our extended family members came to believe that we were sincere, our dreams became theirs. From leaders we became facilitators to successfully achieving a great dream. We doubled output with the passing of each year, seemingly impossible and incredulous growth.

The elders in the family also had the difficult and important task of maintaining discipline and fairness amongst family members. You have to be fair but firm, tough but tender and hard but humane.

You may ask if it is so simple then why so many people and organisations simply cannot implement this approach. Good things come from people with good and noble beliefs. Sincerity can be faked only for a while, because people easily come to see through insincerity rather quickly.

What goes around comes around. Many organisations and their leaders have grown physically, emotionally and spiritually distant from their own people. It is then not a family but a gathering of individuals only concerned about exploitation and increasing their individual wealth and power at all costs.

By engaging sincerely and respectfully with team/family members, nothing is impossible.