Author: alearningaday

Good Morning.. and have a great Friday! :)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

– If by Rudyard Kipling..

This is a deep one..

Have a great day! :)

When was the last time I woke up at 4am to watch a Carling Cup match?

When was the last time a Utd-City game had so much rivalry and significance?

Never would be the answer to both..

Good for English football..

And may the best team win! :D

Note: For those uninitiated – Manchester United vs Manchester City(the new richest club in the world) is the Manchester derby. Derby is a match played within places close by – where the rivalry is shared by the common public who discuss the game at work. For example, imagine an average work-place is manchester where supporters are split between the 2 clubs.. Never are matches played with as much passion. For a Utd fan, watching the City moneybags challenge is bad enough and we need to win this!

Ladies and Gentleman, it’s time for war.

Good Morning.. and Have a great day! :)

Good morning.. good tuesday! :)

Good morning! Have a great week! :)

Effective communication – 2 words that can potentially be very fuzzy when put together. The first step, then, would naturally be to break it down.

Let’s visit Susan meeting Jake with a miserable look on her face.
Jake – What happened? Are you okay?
Susan – Gosh! Everything in life seems to be going wrong..

Jake’s reaction could be one of the following –
1) ‘Oh, let’s sit down and talk about it’
2) ‘Susan, I have exactly 7 minutes before I go for my jog. Please be concise, frame an agenda to begin with and stick to it.’

We are always told to focus on being efficient(cue ‘be more efficient in managing time/tasks’). However, while being efficient may work well with tasks and machines, there is a need to be effective when it comes to homo sapiens i.e. do what it takes to make sure points get across.

How do we get effective? What would effective communication entail?

I feel effective communication is about getting your point across in a way that the receiver remembers it for life. And to make that happen, I’m going to draw inspiration from Dan and Chip Heath who co-authored ‘Made to Stick‘. Based on their research, the way to make something stick is –

S: Simplicity
U: Unexpectedness
C: Concreteness
C: Credibility
E: Emotions
S: Stories

Let’s look at a few great examples of words/phrases that have ‘stickiness’ –

‘A bird in hand is worth two in the bush’ – Traveled all the way from times before Christ.

Or let’s examine John F Kennedy’s famous statement that inspired America to work ceaseless to send a man on the moon. His call was to –
‘Put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.’

It is interesting to observe how these statements are simple, unexpected, concrete(easy to imagine bird in the hand or a man on the moon), credible(more so in the case of JFK), bring out emotions and yet, are stories in miniature.

The big lesson here would be to think through what we are planning to present in our next presentation and test if it meets the ‘SUCCES’ criteria.
And here’s to trying to use ‘SUCCES’ to become communicate effectively then. All the best to me!

Morgan Freeman was, as always, at a whole different level. Matt Damon and everyone else played their roles to perfection. An inspiring movie..

1) Be a light, not a judge: Mandela was always a light on how to behave, leading only by setting the right example. For a man who was imprisoned for 26 years to forgive those who imprisoned him required thinking for the greater good.

2) Think from a level above: While it may have been intuitive for Mandela to dive into solving problems like corruption, crime etc, he sought first to unite the masses under the rugby flag. That was a master-stroke..

3) Inspiration: As demonstrated by Mandela in his message to Francois Pienaar, the captain of the Rugby team – what was needed at all time was inspiration. That’s what helped the South African’s to defy all odds..

Do we summon inspiration every day of our lives to remind ourselves to look at the bigger picture?

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

– Invictus by William Ernest Henley