Proactive Change

The results of transformative change are all around us this summer. Sunflower plants busting out from seeds where they have slept tightly curled, butterflies leaving behind their worn out cocoons, flowers dressing up the bare limbs of trees. This time as the financial year begins it is the time for the 3Rs rest, relaxation and rejuvenation of proactive change. Change is the only certainty in an uncertain world. This year you will change merely because everything around you will change. What you can decide is whether you will lead the change or become a victim of it. Think about proactively changing things in the following areas of your life. 1. Personal 2. Family 3. Professional 4. Social Personal: Create goals that will improve your skills and build on your strengths. Tap into the passion that you have kept tightly leashed because you had no time. Did you always want to learn to play the guitar? Sign up now. Was Bollywood dancing what lights your fire? Do it. Sign up for a distance learning programme. Family: Ask your family members to suggest change each of them would like. Try to see if it can be done. Don’t be a casualty of the corporate rat race. Professional: Have a chat with your team mates. Volunteer for a tough blue sky job. Create a daily ‘huddle’ in your workplace so that everyone can meet and talk for a few minutes every morning. Make sure everyone participates. Work on making it a fun place. Social: Create a face book page for your family and friends. Keep in touch, share pictures, keep them informed and interested and involved in an interesting activity: a get-together for all your friends, an annual family reunion, a pot luck meet and eat for all your neighbours. Things will change anyway. Make sure they change in the way you want. And remember a butterfly is not an improved caterpillar. Just as a sunflower is not an improved seed.

Create a positive field

 A mental process which draws a magic circle of love around all those who are participating.  A prayer or mantra said together.  A common exercise, a company song, common goals.  A handshake, a friendly look, an encouraging word.  Thinking, believing and acting in a positive manner.  Laughter and shared jokes.

Create a positive field

 A mental process which draws a magic circle of love around all those who are participating.  A prayer or mantra said together.  A common exercise, a company song, common goals.  A handshake, a friendly look, an encouraging word.  Thinking, believing and acting in a positive manner.  Laughter and shared jokes.

Elevate everyday experiences to the level of sacredness!

When work is done with love, it fills the body and mind with bliss and transforms any place into a sacred space. As Khalil Gibran writes in The Prophet, “What is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth from the strings of your heart, as though your Beloved were to wear it.” What is required to fill your blood with the chemicals of bliss is an attitude transplant. Soar on your positive attitude. Decide to approach all events, all people, and all things with affection, reverence and ‘Sraddha.’ This reverence is due to all, because of the divine spark that dwells in everyone whether he is a legend or a failure. Sometimes it is obvious. It is the silent flame of consciousness that reaches out to you from a flowering creeper or a healthy pet. Sometimes this life force has lost its vitality and is dimmed by dirt, lethargy and lack of care. Clean the glass of your Life’s lamp. Make the light shine through. It is essential to look into our emotional, mental and psychological environment, as our thoughts and emotions directly contribute to our wellbeing or otherwise. Meditation can clean up the field and contribute enormously to an individual’s psychological and physiological wellbeing.

Action Plan to Enhance Positives

• Write a love letter to your parents • Buy tickets to a music concert and give away some of it. • Treat yourself to a full moon dinner with loved ones. • Take your dog to the beach. • Plant a tree and take care of it (a tree is an oxygen factory). • Give away seeds. The monsoons are awaiting to make them grow • Feed the birds. Do God’s work

Celebrate the Positives

Celebrate the positive in all interactions. Rest assured that God did not create you for the sole purpose of correcting others or making them unhappy. When we say namaste, we say ‘I bow to the Divine in you’. ‘Vasudeva Kutumbakam’ say, our holy book – the whole world is your family. Imagine the rich network of love you could create, where your children can be nurtured if you believed and practiced this. The most inexpensive ticket to happiness is helping others and making others happy. So spread happiness like Amul butter on bread. It will stick to your fingers. Create a happiness committee in your street, which meets every month to create a happy street. Every month as you decide to install comfort touch, celebrate Diwali or have a painting competition for kids, neighbours become friends.

Take them everyday!

Take short relaxation breaks, at least thrice a day. 2. Eat fresh, energy-giving foods. 3. Take a walk outdoors during lunch break. 4. Stay away from politics and back-biting. 5. Involve your spouse and children in your work. Bring them to the office during lunch break or on a Saturday.

Indigenous Health-Care Systems

The indigenous health-care system is commensurate with the traditional habits, lifestyle and value systems of a particular culture from where it has evolved. It cannot be effective if there is a radical change in the habits of that culture. This ‘patient–system– mismatch’ is very evident in the case of westernized American Indians who have lost their traditional healing capacities. On the contrary, the Keralites, for example, in spite of coming into contact with western culture, do not endorse its systems, and hold on to their own traditions. Perhaps that is why their age-old habit of using a high cholesterol diet has not resulted in an increased incidence of heart disease. The indigenous systems of medicine continue to have a stronghold in Kerala. All health-care systems, including modern medicine, are in agreement today over the issue that a patient’s psychological state has much to do with the healing process. Minor activities like taking part in a satsang, singing a tune you enjoy, and dancing for fun to your child’s delight can make you feel contented and allow the good chemicals flow. ‘The chief role of the doctor is, by various means, to induce the body to recover its trust in the Supreme Grace,’ said the Mother from Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, decades ago. The contact of the patient with the physician is only an occasion to awaken him to the touch of the healer within.

New Ways for Corporate Women

Woman managers need to appreciate that it takes heroic energy to rock the cradle and rock the corporate world. First pin a badge for bravery on yourself for attempting it. Then, promise you will not even begin to tread the path that leads to the joyless land of being a super-woman or super-mom. Enlist your men and families as willing accomplices in the challenging task of reconstructing a corporate. Workplace that lovingly accommodates the needs of humans, for families, for music, poetry and time for just standing and watching the world go by! Be kind to yourself. Love yourself. Conquer fear and overcome the need for instructions. Pursue the ability to adapt and be a leader of proactive change. The New World is not for those who are what Nehru called unwilling victims, dragged to be sacrificed on the altar of change. Be leaders to be accepted as such. Banish forever your fear of being centre stage, your reluctance to accept that you are where the buck stops. Relearn and re-install the software of the human heart that your mothers embodied. The New Woman of the past decade must not forsaken her heritage of loving and caring for the tough hard-bitten so-called ‘male boss model.’ Both men and women managers need to put the human being at the centre of all business processes.

Execute, communicate and train

Implement like an Innovation Star. This is the day to make a final presentation to all the teams in the presence of top management. Get feedback from all stakeholders and respond to concerns. It is a good idea to leave the plan to be studied by all participants. Each can peacefully reflect on it, internalize it. This is the time to get the resource budget cleared. All participants and stakeholders must now receive a clear communication on what to expect. Here it is important to note the process-- communication has to be long term, continuous and consistent. Human resources professionals and problem owners must ensure that the necessary training modules are implemented and their efficacy measured. Management systems implementation should now kick in. The management information system to ensure clear measurement of action should be available to all players. The website and other internet support systems should be properly administered by a webmaster to ensure the seamless flow of information where possible. A regularly produced e-bulletin would help. Knowledge, information and wisdom are important. ‘Know How’ is essential, but ‘do how’ is just as important. Teams by now have dived into the messy business of how to implement what they have chosen as solutions. They have created plans and strategies and worked co-operatively and negotiated the best route to take. Action now becomes the priority.

Flexibility and adaptability is key to Innovation

Adapting to change and proactively responding to opportunities are daunting tasks. Top management needs to handhold teams through these risky processes. Failures need to be dealt with in a way that protects and encourages risk taking. Only CEOs can provide the time and resources required for companies to be outwardly focused, scanning the environment of competitors, customers, academicians, suppliers and even different industries. Such companies have a better chance of becoming innovation stars. CEOs can provide courage, zest, enthusiasm and speed to the whole organization. It is this energy that will drive an Innovation Initiative. Large, traditional companies have a tendency to become more bureaucratic. Bureaucracy produces politics, red tape and power struggles. People find a hundred rules to protect themselves from acting. This can repress the natural energy and enthusiasm of the organization. CEOs can prevent this deadening disease.