Happy Diwali

ok ok I did slip up on my vow to post everyday. Next time if the broadband gives up on me i will definitly go to a internet cafe and make the post.

Its Diwali and i am in Sivakasi (Little Japan) the worlds firecracker shop. Going to celebrate it to the max.

Interesting there is so much to Diwali.


One very interesting story about this Diwali day is from Kathopanishad of a small boy called Nichiketa who believed that Yam, the god of Death was as black as the dark night of amavasya. But when he met Yam in person he was puzzled seeing Yam's calm countenance and dignified stature. Yam explained to Nichiketa on this Diwali day of amavasya that by only passing through the darkness of death, man sees the light of highest wisdom and then only his soul can escape from the bondage of his mortal frame to mingle with the Supreme Power without whose will not an at ton moves in the world. And then Nichiketa realised the importance of worldly life and significance of death. Nichiketa's all doubts were set at rest and he whole-heartedly participated in Diwali celebrations.

Serendipity

I was looking for a guideline for my efforts to bring change in my company and like the saying goes " when the student is ready the teacher appears" the rss feed from How to save the world came up. Hope to make good use of it.

1. Save our breath, stop trying to tell and convince people, and instead show them -- by creating working models of communities in which people are a harmonious part of all life in those communities, living in balance with a light footprint. The woman rap poet in Toronto who says she's tired of 'environmentalists' coming into her urban neighbourhood talking about the importance of planting trees, when that neighbourhood is full of angry young people with no job prospects drawn to the promise of wealth and glamour in local drug gangs, is absolutely right not to care about the-environment-as-other.

2. Use the arts (including film and photography) to convey the message, since they are not constrained by the limits of language. As an example, there's a song by James Taylor called Gaia which includes the passage below. Unless you know the song, these lyrics probably won't have any impact on you, but few people who have listened to the song are unmoved by its soaring melody and brooding harmonies, which 'say' much more than the words and open people up to its message:

Turn away from your animal kind,
Try to leave your body just to live in your mind,
Leave cold cruel Mother Earth behind -- Gaia,
As if you were your own creation,
As if you were the chosen nation,
And the world around you just a rude and dangerous invasion.

Explore some inventive linguistic ways of expressing new (and ancient) ideas with everyday words. In yesterday's post, for example, I was playing with hyphenated words as a means of trying to convey concepts that defy clear one-word _expression: I used 'engaged-as-part' as an adjective to describe awareness (instead of 'integral') and 'being-a-part-of' as an adjective (instead of 'holistic') to describe human activitythat is not automatic, disconnected information processing activity.

Inertia to Inertia

Hey i did what i planned to do for the day. The posting in blog yesterday made me do it for sure. The meeting started off well and lot of ice/eyes breaking happening. They responded well to my thoughts but i can see a lot of ego stopping progress situation within them. Now i have converted their inertia of not doing new things to inertia of looking at new things for a beginning. Later i will try to make it an inertia of doing new things. Ok sorry i am taking management science a bit seriously. So what are the next baby steps?

1) As my good friend suggested reward for doing something new is definetly going to work
2) making it a habit to ask them what they have done new
3) make it a point to listen to what they are saying.

One pair of ears would exhaust a hundred tongues.

Day2 2day

It was really exciting to see comments for my previous post.

Today I learned a lot about human behaviour at work from my small business . Building a team of people from diverse background is so difficult. I have an operator who is educated(Diploma in Electrical Engineering) and four assistant printers who have not completed their 3 rd standard for running a printing machine. The operator with his education is able to accept new ideas, scientific reasoning for problems and is willing to try new things and learn. While the assistant printers had learned the trade from their previous work place from and experienced operator who works on "rule of thumb". The four assistant printers so now are classic products of rule of thumb believers and do not believe that there is more than one way to do it. I want to bring up a Continuous Learning, continuously improving work environment in the company. Such diversity in the attitude of work is making my task a herculean effort. So what am I going to do about it?

1) Call all of them tomorrow for a meeting and tell them what I expect from each of them.
2) Tell them that they are a team and should compliment each other in skills.
3) Explain them how continuous learning and improvement can increase their quality of life.

Hope this works.

As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.

~Albert Schweitzer

Starting today

Starting out today with my daily dose of life. I am starting a blog for the third time and let me see if i will be "Third time Lucky".

What did i create this blog for? I dont know. I did start the earlier blogs with something in mind, for example my blog Management for Entrepreneurs was started off with my idea of sharing management realities and experience of small and medium scale industries and what happened - I got a comment from a robot inviting me to join a dating website, WOW i would say rather than not having anyone comment on my first blog. So this time I have decided not to have any "Ideas" for the blog but be commited to atleast make a post a day.