Live in harmony

I read a nice story recently.

It was rainy season. The river in Mulla Nasiruddin's village was flooded. One day few villagers came running to Mulla and cried, "Mulla run. Your wife is drowned in the flooded river."

Mulla ran hard and jumped into the river. He started struggling to swim upstream.

"No... No... She must be downstream. You are trying to move in wrong direction," cried the villagers.

"I know my wife. She can only move upwards... upstream," shouted Mulla.

Our ego makes us struggle against the nature and create challenges. Can we learn to live in harmony?

Perseverance: Key to success

In a population where every person has at least critical IQ, it seems perseverance is a better predictor of success than level of IQ in most of the situations. However, most of the selection tests in organizations and institutes look for higher IQ. 

Appreciation

I find that people often find it tough to appreciate others' capability. It seems people have their own benchmarks for appreciating others. Unless they find someone much superior to themselves, there is little to appreciate. Even if they find someone genuinely superior, it is tough to accept this fact openly as appreciation might belittle the appreciator.

Think, reflect and enjoy... 

Damage of the MBA education: Bliss of the present

So many students visit me to seek career advice. I invariably ask them what did they want to achieve in life. They talk about status, contributing to society, utilization of learning during MBA…

None has told me that s/he were looking for happiness in life. Are we so obsessed with objectives? This is, I think, the biggest damage of MBA education. It makes people activity oriented. They seek to achieve objectives through strategy, planning, training… Consequently, they always live in future constantly chasing the objectives, goals, targets... They miss the bliss of the present.

Activity makes them part of system. The joy of action that is finely groomed in the present is missed in the process. 

Teacher or politician

It is amazing to see so many teachers entering into politics. It made me think deeper. Are teachers similar to politicians, but scared of contesting elections? Many times teachers do believe in ruling over others. They often act like emperors in the class where students actually are made to behave like small peasant. This behavior is displayed in the class in plenty. They compete with other teachers like any politician for popularity, visibility etc.

Are they world class

There has been intense debate after Mr. Jairam Ramesh's statement about faculty at IITs and IIMs. My views on this:

a) According to the Minister the students at IITs and IIMs are world class and not the faculty. However, IIMs and IITs have nearly 25 % (my estimate) faculty who are from IIT/IIM background. At least they are world class, even by his standards. Further, rest are from top schools of US and India. All of them have high academic credentials. It is perhaps the culture, work priorities, ecosystem that does not allow them to publish as much as they would have liked.

b) According my latest study, country is facing leadership crisis. Education sector also suffers from the same. The true motivational leaders that could enthuse faculty for excellent research and other academic work could be counted on fingers in the country. This needs to be addressed, if we want many world-class institutions in India.

c) Suddenly we find that Government has completely withdrawn from the governance of IIMs and IITs. It is too risky as the checks and balances are getting adversely affected. It is essential that Government plays an active role in the governance of these places. Let us appreciate that these Institutions have reached to current level of excellence owing to active support of Government.

d) It is time that a review committee of international repute is assigned the task of studying IITs and IIMs and suggest measures. Committees of current and previous leaders of these Institutions would not be appropriate for this role.

Power of irrelevance

Most people fear "becoming irrelevant." I discovered today that one actually needs to become irrelevant to grow. Irrelevance forces the individual work harder to develop new abilities to reach to new peaks before becoming irrelevant again.

So strive to become irrelevant and grow again.