Yeh Jawaani….is not so Deewani! Where’s the Kahaani?

Yeh Jawaani….is not so Deewani! Where’s the Kahaani?

 

Ok so? What’s so wrong with that? That’s perfectly fine! We don’t really expect our Bollywood romcoms to have a story or anything. We have enough stories in our television for that. Be it crime shows or soaps…or hell, there are much deeper stories in our reality shows and news channels nowadays. In fact, let our Bollywood remain the way it is – breezy, frothy and brain-dead. Who cares about good scripts in the movies…when we have much better scripted IPL matches doing the rounds?

Yes, that’s a very valid argument and expectation to begin with. And most of our blockbusters do get away with this license to entertain, entertain and entertain. However, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (YJHD) suffers from another big issue – damn, it’s not enough Deewani either!

YJHD. Produced by Dharma Productions, Karan Johar (of you know what fame). And directed by Ayan Mukherjee (of Wake Up Sid fame). If there is anything that should prepare (rather warn) you for the dichotomy that lies it, it are these different chalk and cheese credentials. The movie starts beautifully. It builds it up neatly and quite entertainingly. It’s all fun, games and KJo kind of feel-good mush right up till the intermission. The characters are all well-etched and perfectly set up. The situation is ripe for a take-off in the second half. And it’s an exciting crescendo that takes you right up to the highest peaks of Manali and builds your appetite for a stunning second half. Yeah Jawaani! So far, so good. We’ve enjoyed the Jawaani bit…time to make it Deewani!

However, cut to the second half and real director of the movie, Ayan Mukherjee, is summoned to wrap it up. And it’s here that the flick not just descends, or paraglides….but simply nosedives from the peaks it had attained in the first half. The wafer-thin, single sentence story is left grappling for some oxygen. It tries to infuse some energy through a couple of boisterous songs, however, not enough for a plot that has already hit a coma.

“Go follow your heart, chase your dreams…but don’t be in such a rush to not enjoy the present. Be content with what you have, sit down and enjoy the sunsets…as no matter what, you may never be able to grab it all in one life.” These are all great Good Morning messages on your WhatsApp. However, to drag a movie for 170+ minutes with these philosophies is a criminal waste of resources. It may have still made sense if there was some serious substance and conflict backing these thoughts. However, by just making it too verbose…the Jawaani is lost of all its promised Deewanapan in the second half.  

In the good ‘ol days, Bollywood love stories were all about conflict and fighting the odds against the world. Be it the rich-poor divide, the caste systems or family feuds that kept the longing lovers at loggerheads with the entire world. There have also been the love triangles, friendly sacrifices and a whole lot of confusion that have kept the love stories entangled for a long time. However, off late, the world has progressed. Good news for the lovers as the parents have become much cooler. We no longer see fuming dads or scheming moms. Caste divide, rich-poor, family feuds have all been banished for good (atleast in the cinema). Or atleast, no longer cool subjects to be woven into our picture postcard stories. Triangles – well there is only so much one can do with triangles. Isosceles, right angle or equilateral. What else? So then what are love stories all about nowadays?  

Well, we need to keep the lovers engaged for 150-odd minutes, right? And now that the external forces (zaalim duniya) has softened its stand, the lovers mess it up within themselves and their minds to create an issue when there is none. Commitment phobia, I want a career, I wanna fly, pyar dosti hai, dosti pyar hai, she’s not my type, oh! Perhaps he is gay! …just pick up any Bollywood romcom of the last decade and lovers have all but muddled it up in their minds. Damn, you are in love? You wanna marry? Just go ahead...and we’ll join the celebrations. But no, the now generation needs to keep it convoluted and philosophised for no apparent reason.

Well, YJHD is another one joining the assembly line of such rom-bores. Think about it, is the now generation actually so confused? Well, actually not! Do young people really think so much about career, love and marriages as such life altering, mutually exclusive events? Well, not at all! The now generation is much more sorted than ever before! Looking around…people are having great careers and awesome marriages, they’re shifting jobs and even careers at the drop of a hat, they’re falling in and out of love much faster than the drop of a hat…and yes they’re getting married in style without much ado. And many like Rakhi Sawant and Rahul Mahajan are even making a career out of getting married! It’s all so supercool these days!

Coming back to the movie review. YJHD is long, very long movie (and hence this long review!) It’s perfect popcorn entertainment for the first 2 hours and keeps you enthralled. The songs are already a rage and set the screen on fire. It’s not news, that Ranbir Kapoor is a super entertainer and the biggest superstar of the current lot. And he further entrenches his reputation and stardom with YJHD. Deepika is an eyesore and continues to be. With every movie, she proves that she needs to join a professional acting course…and somebody needs to start dubbing her dialogues. The surprise packet is Kalki and as always, she is a pleasure to watch. Warm presence and a superb act!

However amongst the negatives is of course the tiring length. The last 1 hour is a never-ending drag that seems to go nowhere. The movie anti-climaxes to nothingness and gives us more of Farooq Sheikh (looking terribly aged) and Tanvi Azmi for our buck. Not at all desirable. The characterisations are super-shallow (except Kalki) that keeps you wondering – So what’s the fuss all about? Ranbir Kapoor ends up coming across as a wannabe, trying to be too cool, but too confused wimpy hero. Deepika is confused in the stereotype of good, intelligent girls can’t have fun…and sobs her heart out for no apparent reason. Aditya Roy Kapoor as the best friend is the weakest link (in terms of character) and adds nothing to the story. Is he an alcoholic? Is he jealous? Is he in love? Is he a compulsive flirt? Is he a loser? Is he a great, emotional friend? Why the hell is he so sad? Is he a rich dad’s aiyyash beta?  Or is he an aiyyash dad’s misunderstood beta? What’s his damn problem? Is he….well, why was he there in the movie? Ah, there you nailed it! He is UTV’s head honcho’s brother! Got it my friend?

So YJHD is a perfect case of a project that was bankrolled in the following manner. Sign in the reigning heartthrobs Ranbir and Deepika. Check. Record some really chartbusting numbers. Check. How about adding in Make My Trip as a product placement partner? Excellent, check! Ok, can we now fit both of UTV’s honcho’s brothers in here? Oh yes, certainly, why not! Check. Ok, all done. “Now Ayan can you please summarize some cool philosophies from your email forwards and quickly put together a screenplay?”

To sum it up, YJHD is an interesting travelogue to begin with…and gives solid footage to Make My Trip. It’s great, paisa-vasool fun for the first 2 hours. However, its tail wags for too long, for too little and ends too tame. In fact, it kills the pleasure of all that was neatly set-up initially. However, feel free to walk away after the Dilli waali Girlfriend song and you won’t miss much.
 

P.S. Madhuri’s special appearance item song must be amongst her worst…and should in fact disqualify her from being a judge in Jhalak Dikhlaaja.
 

In the end, just wish that this Jawaani was a bit more Deewani & Toofani. And of course, a bit less Dee-‘YAWN’-i! Yaaaawn…Oh Kabira!

Itni Shakti Humein Dena 'Data'!!

Are our MI Reports making the desired Impact?

 

Most often, post our discussion with our clients and stakeholders we start creating MI reports. Reports depicting performance trends, task volumes, success rates, TAT and a range of other important metrics. We discuss more, and we continue creating new reports and making amendments to the existing reports. We continue generating more reports, for more people, with more frequency to ensure that our stakeholders have all the information that they’ll ever need. However, twist this scenario and think. Thanks to all our enthusiastic reporting and the reams of reports we generate. However, will our stakeholders EVER NEED all this information?

Can we please go back to all our reports in our respective processes and try to look at each of them through the following seven lenses?

1. Is it simple and Relevant?

It’s easy to get overly ambitious and want to provide highly detailed, real-time reports covering each and every slice-and-dice analysis that’ll provide our stakeholders with multiple dimensions. But instead of spending multiple weeks or even months working through our first iteration, take it step-wise. Start with simple and key metrics and then work through several short cycles of prototype, test and adjust.

2.  Is it uncluttered and unambiguous?

Do not clutter your reports with unimportant (though good-looking) graphics. Keep your report simple and impactful in its visual appeal. Resist the temptation to make it too flashy or over-designed graphics and charts. As pretty as those may seem, they get in the way with your report’s objective i.e. rapidly and easily informing your audience.

3.  Is it too entangled and misrepresentative?  

Often reports start simple. And then there are complex formulae’s like percentages, lookups, deriving values from multiple sheets, sum and if conditions, circular errors (where a cell refers to its own value to recalculate a new value) and similar convolutions. It is here that we run a risk of data misrepresentation. When it takes too many sheets and entangled formulae to arrive at a new value, there is always the chance of our final graphs (despite being visually high-impact) showing an inaccurate picture.

For e.g. last month the team occupancy was 80%. Of that 80%, 70% of bandwidth deployed was for Project A. Within this Project A, we used 90% of our bandwidth for activity XYZ. Now, a different chart somewhere might show bandwidth on XYZ is 90%. However, that’s absolutely misleading as the actual bandwidth deployed on activity XYZ is just about 50% (90% of 70% of 80%).

Hence, it is always suggested to frequently go deep into all the formulae and charts in all our existing reports. It is an imperative step to iron out all the inherent chinks that might’ve inadvertently crept in.

4. Is it well structured, designed and formatted?

Take care in how you design your graphs and charts. For example,

·         3D offers no increase in viewer comprehension.

·         Garish colors can interfere with interpretation.

·         Choosing a pie chart for more than 6 values makes the graphic virtually impossible to read.

·         Have we ‘wrapped text’ for long remarks/statements and aligned it well (both horizontally and vertically)?

·         Are we following a standard colour scheme?

·         In case of currencies, have we inserted the right symbol and ‘000 separators?

·         In case of numbers, have we standardized the decimal spaces?

·         Do all the worksheets have appropriate titles?

·         Are all the embedded links and formulae correct and functional?

And finally, beyond the aesthetics, some of the most important questions for all our reports –

5. Can we reduce the frequency?

Not everyone needs every bit of information on a daily basis. Some information doesn’t even add much value on a weekly basis (there are hardly any movements). So should we reconsider the frequencies of our all our existing reports? Can some of them be reduced from dailies to weeklies to bi-weeklies to monthlies?

6. Can we merge two reports?

When two or more reports have a large proportion of exactly similar elements, why then are we wasting our efforts in extracting the same information multiple times? Is there a possibility of merging multiple reports and reducing our redundant efforts?

7. Can we become dispassionate and have a realistic discussion around do we actually need a particular report? What if we stop it completely?

Often we keep doing things, following MI routines and generating age-old reports which are perhaps no longer relevant to anybody. Often, we make innovations and introduce new reports with high-relevance metrics that everyone is keenly looking at. However, we continue to keep running the old reports alongside the new ones, just in case, someone wants to revert to the old format for some comparison trends.

However, there should be a clear-cut, well-defined period of generating such ‘just in case’ old reports. If we keep generating all our old reports alongside the new reports till eternity, the very purpose of introducing innovations is defeated. Till the time all new innovations that are introduced (to bring in efficiencies) do not see any corresponding ‘old practices’ being stopped, the innovations are an additional strain on our systems and resources. It’s an ideal case of building in more redundancies rather than efficiencies.

Hence, time and again, keep questioning all the existing reports for the value and relevance they bring to the table. If you haven’t heard any feedback or questions around a particular report for a long time, perhaps no one is actually looking at it any longer!

And how does one identify such ‘just in case’ redundant reports? Just one approach – keep questioning! Frequently keep challenging and questioning yourself with tough questions around “What if I don’t generate this report?” rather than going over-board with your ‘It will be done!-delighting-the-stakeholder’ attitude.

In the current testing times, deriving efficiencies out of our existing systems, resources and reports plays a much bigger role than ever before. Do your bit. Ask the right questions. And contribute in avoiding the information overload. Cut the flab, get lean!

Itni Shakti humein dena ‘Data’, Kabhi Insights Kamzor ho na!

Let’s explore the Power of Data!

Ever Wondered what your Dil, Still Chahta Hai?

Kai Po Che!: Something Missing Che (6)!

Kai Po Che fails is all about half measures: Here’s analysing what’s Missing Che (6)

Okay, first things first and to give the devil its due – Kai Po Che is a nice, endearing, clean and sweet film in today’s times crassy ‘Murders’, massy ‘Bol Bachchans’ and thrashy ‘Ghaziabads’.

The plot and premise is refreshing (for those who haven’t read the book). And the cast is lively, earnest and effective.

And now, here’s straightaway coming to the Missing Che (6).  Che i.e. 6 Reasons or shortfalls which pull down this ‘good and clean effort’ from being the ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ of this decade. Or perhaps yet another 3 Idiots kinda blockbuster that too was inspired by a Chetan Bhagat bestseller.

What’s Missing Che (6) in Kai Po Che?

1.      For any male-bonding movie, it is essential to establish the camaraderie between its key protagonists before moving on to their conflicts and turmoil. Kai Po Che fails to strike home this chord. Unlike a DCH, which had a collage of magical moments (including the cult road trip to Goa…which is now in the wish-list of every damn alpha male), or even a Rock-On!! which had some heart-tugging camaraderie moments, Kai Po Che never manages to establish this die-hard dosti amidst its lead troika. Yes the tag-line goes ‘Brothers…for life’, but there isn’t much meat to establish this essential feature in the movie. At its core, the relationship between the buddies remains strictly transactional and business-business.

 

2.       The cast is dew-fresh. The director had all the opportunity to flesh-out their characterizations, their finer nuances, dissimilarities and quirks. However, eventually all the characters end up being half-baked. You never truly root for any one of the character or its dilemma, aspirations, victories or defeats. And mind you, this is where the book ‘3 mistakes of my life’ did a fantastic job in establishing all the characters – be it Govind, Ishaan, Omi, Vidya, Bittoo Mama or even Ali. The movie also drops many an interesting characters like the sly and suave Parekhji (imagine this could’ve been a saucy negative role) or even the endearing Govind’s mother.

 

3.      The director chooses to drop-off some of the most interesting and entertaining parts of the book, to possibly make it much tighter and engrossing. However, unfortunately in the bargain, he ends up making this a very grim and dry affair. So here’s the most interesting shortcoming of the movie. While the book was not a really a literary treat, it had great potential for a typical Bollywood romcom with elements like an Australian vacation, some delicate moments of a clandestine romance and an interesting gate-crashing into Team Australia! However, the director chops-off these elements (budget constraints?) and robs the movie of some its possibly delightful moments.

 

4.      Delightful moments? Oh yes, that brings us to another key missing aspect – an imaginative screenplay. Do we know, why, where and how 3 idiots completely changed the game? And elevated the movie much beyond the book? It was in its imaginative screenplay. That’s where an intelligent writer-director like Raju Hirani exhibited his true strengths in tweaking and adding new dimensions to a super-successful book. Hirani added generous doses of humour, an effective voice-over from Madhavan that provided some of the best one-liners in key situations and the enigmatic characterization of Rancho. It is here that Hirani took great liberty in adding newer elements to the movie alongside the core theme of the book. It is here that Abhishek Kapoor fails in Kai Po Che. The movie has zero humour (though there was lots of scope for it) or playing to the gallery moments. There is no smart voice-over. It’s an almost ultra-drab representation of the book.

 

5.      Do we remember the single most important character in last year’s sleeper hit ‘Kahaani’? No, not Vidya Balan or Bob or the cops. The most important character was the city of Kolkata! Kahaani offered a great ringside view of the sights, smells and feel of Kolkata. Delhi was a key character in ‘No one killed Jessica’ or ‘Khosla ka Ghosla’. Mumbai played an equally key character as Bhiku Mahatre in ‘Satya’. Kai Po Che is set in the seductively beautiful city of Ahmedabad or Ambavad (for the locals). But nowhere do we feel the colours or vivacity of this city. As indicated earlier, the visuals in Kai Po Che remain largely monotone, monochromatic, dark and, dare I say, boring!

 

6.      And finally, the most crucial missing link in this entire underwhelming adventure. The music! Three songs in the entire Kai Po Che soundtrack. One (Manjha) that has stuck-on to our minds due to continuous hammering on the tube and two other forgettable numbers (Meethi Boliyan and Shenai). For a movie/book of this canvas, it called for an extravagant soundtrack (more like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam). However, surprisingly, Kai Po Che suffers badly due to the absence of a good, solid, hummable and breezy soundtrack. Last year’s multiple average films like Cocktail, Student of the Year and Khiladi 786 were largely propelled due to their catchy music. Even Abhishek Kapoor’s earlier Rock-On!! had a winning soundtrack. What then compelled him to settle for just three songs and no youth favourites in Kai Po Che will remain a mystery bigger than Robert Vadra’s sudden accumulation of wealth.

To sum it up – while Kai Po Che is finding critical and audience acclaim, it ends up being a sum total of many half measures of what it could’ve been. While it’s debatable whether the movie is better than the book or vice versa (for me, definitely the book was much better), Kai Po Che is sadly not the Dil Chahta Hai revisited I was so keenly waiting for.

Leading Through Compassion, Building to Last: Chapter 3

Leading Through Compassion, Building to Last: Chapter 3

Here is the third and concluding chapter in a three part piece on 'Compassionate Leadership'. Do check the first and second parts for a much better understanding of this conclusive piece.

 

 

At its heart, compassionate coaching has to be about transcendental change. It is one thing for an older and wiser leader to advise a younger one on the rigours of the corporate world, it's another to change ingrained habits. It’s about transforming the "unconscious incompetencies" into "conscious competencies". And these are very subconscious, subtle stages of learning. In the first stage– unconscious incompetence – individuals don't know that they don't know. Some sort of awakening is required that what has been done in the past doesn't work anymore and this leads to 'conscious incompetence' – now you know you don't know. In the next stage, conscious competence is developed, 'so now you know you know'. The final stage is 'unconscious competence', where – like driving a car –behaviours and thinking become automatic. It happens from an unconscious state.

While not a word typically associated with organisational leadership, compassion in this context means taking responsibility for the growth and development of others, something that should be every leader's goal.

In everyday life, people typically confuse compassion with kindness. There is a point that all managers face, wanting to be nice to people, but also having an organizational purpose. How often have we seen leaders getting stuck trying to balance the two, either being too hard or too soft in their approaches. Taking responsibility for organizational systems and the people in them can be overwhelming, tiring or frightening for managers. One example is the common dilemma when a manager is reluctant to tell a subordinate that they are not performing because that person is perceived to be fragile. They may come from a minority group or be difficult to deal with. But for a manager faced with this situation, to stick his or her head in the sand is counter-productive. Whether the reluctance to address the performance issue is due to kindness (or fear), failure to address the real issue actually blocks the under-performing person's growth and the system is damaged. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Getting people where they want to go will sometimes involve hard conversations. Many managers don't like having these conversations. But to be effective as a manager and leader, they must have them. And they must have these discussions through the platform of ‘Compassionate Coaching’.

This Compassionate Leadership will certainly bring you much closer to a ‘diamond in the rough’ fellow team member. It’ll allow you to harness the true potential of this team member. In more ways than one, it’ll allow you to discover the true ‘leader’ in yourself.

So how many lives have you positively impacted today? How many careers have you shaped today? How many team members have you not just managed or led but Coached Compassionately today? How many foundations have you laid for built-to-last Centers of Excellence? 

 

 

 

Leading Through Compassion, Building to Last: Chapter 2

 Leading Through Compassion, Building to Last: Chapter 2

for a much better understanding of this follow-upiece

Here is the second chapter in a three part piece on 'Compassionate Leadership'. Do check the first part for a much better understanding of this follow-up piece.

Eventually, be it a Manager, a Leader or a Coach, all have the ultimate objective of leading individuals to attain certain desired results. However, here’s the way I look at it, a manager can be attributed with Transactional Leadership – focusing on the Now. A leader can be attributed with Transformational Leadership – focusing on the strategic, long-term goals through continuous change. However, it is the coach, who needs to take a deep-rooted approach of Transcendental Leadership - focusing in the overall growth of the individuals within a team. Needless to say, none of these are mutually exclusive roles. A Manager will have to time and again keep driving the larger strategic goals amidst his operational gains. A leader will have to play multiple roles from time to time, be it managing some crucial projects or coaching his troops and building the leadership pipeline.

During our fast-paced roles as leaders and managers, our energies are often conserved in achieving tactical or strategic goals. Most of our evaluation mechanisms are often centered around ‘the achieved’ or ‘the not achieved’ part of an individual or team’s objectives. Yes, there are detailed planning sessions, periodic reviews and root—cause analyses at the start and end of each project. But as indicated earlier, the underlying objective is always ‘the project’ at the core of all such discussions. Let’s be candid, most often in our demanding roles as leaders or managers, we have a water-tight mechanism of dealing with our people. We share objectives, make people accountable, empower them, conduct periodic reviews, share feedback, evaluate, hold them responsible and at the end of a grueling year, judge their performance. Meets, Does not meets or Exceeds our Expectation. Period. Absolutely nothing wrong with the entire process and certainly all of us are doing it with utmost sincerity and integrity. However, a good Coach needs to focus on the HOWs, WHYs and essentially WHY NOTs and HOW ELSEs? It demands the Coach to invest much more in an individual and do all that he can do, to make the individual successful. It is here that the success earned has a far long-lasting effect in transforming both the coach and coachee. 

According to a research carried out by the Australian School of business, across 5600-odd employees in 77 organizations, there's a powerful link between productivity and what has been identified as ‘Compassionate Leadership’. It is the ability of leaders to spend more time and effort developing and recognizing their people, welcoming feedback, including criticism, and fostering co-operation among staff. Out of all of the various elements in a business, the ability of a leader to be compassionate – that is, “to understand people's motivators, hopes and difficulties and to create the right support mechanism to allow people to be as good as they can be" – has the greatest correlation with profitability and productivity. Compassion in this context means taking responsibility for the growth and development of others, something that should be every leader's goal. Without this motivation we are on our own with the power we have, rather than using it to benefit our world and work. Without this motivation we're not really leading.

Yes, the pace of our constantly evolving operations and the wide span of our direct reports don’t allow us to slow down and exhibit Compassion at will. Eventually, we do have to identify the stars and the also-rans within our processes and categorize them accordingly. However, time and again, a leader or a manager will need to pick up these ‘also-rans’ and try to fathom – “why haven’t they been running as fast as they potentially can?” Just like a relay-race, ultimately processes are team sport, where success is determined by the speed of the slowest rather than the fastest.

It is these slowest that’ll need a manager’s timely intervention and emphatic ‘coaching’ more often. It is these also-rans and underperformers who’ll need a little bit of push and nudge to ‘be what they have the potential to be!’ It is here that good coach will have to continually flex within the ‘directive and supportive’ leadership scale to truly nurture and extract the most out his coachee. 

  

Everyone needs that one slight nudge

 



This is the second chapter in a three part piece on 'Compassionate Leadership'. Do check the conclusive third part to get a complete dope on your role as a Compassionate Leader.

Leading Through Compassion, Building to Last: Chapter 1

Leading Through Compassion, Building to Last: Chapter 1

Here is the first chapter in a three part piece on 'Compassionate Leadership'.  

 

Amongst the many over-used, misused and often abused ‘management magic wands’ is the hype and hoopla around ‘Centers of Excellence (COE)’. The others in the fray being other whiz-terms like Lean, Balance Score Cards, Six Sigma, Process Reengineering, TQM and of course the latest panacea, Big Data.  The powerful terminology of COE has caught everyone’s fancy and now every leader or manager worth his salt aspires to build a COE. Be it a COE team, a process, a business unit or for that matter an entire organisation. Going strictly by the definition of a Center of Excellence (COE), a center of excellence refers to a team, a shared facility or an entity that provides leadership, evangelization, best practices, research, support and/or training for a focus area. Each manager and leader, by virtue of well-defined and well-oiled processes, SOPs, taut metrics and failure modes intends to build an impeccable team and process. And every such team needs dynamic and agile super-performers to execute the lofty vision of their leaders. Every team demands a bunch of nimble-footed ‘hit the ground running’ individuals that have the ability to burst the learning curve and achieve the top-speed ASAP.

Today’s fast paced and overtly competitive environment expects optimum productivities and other performance KRAs from an employee ASAP. The water-tight metrics and real-time dashboards are quick to bucketise employees into ‘rising stars’, ‘high potential’, ‘also-rans’ and ‘underperformers’ in no time. In turn, the leaders or managers are quick to pick these ‘labels’ and deploy their focus on the stars within their system.

Are ‘Centers of Excellence’ just meant to further ‘excellent’ employees? Or is it a culture of cloning excellence and building excellent employees out of everyone? Do managers and leaders have the will to spend time with the laggards in their teams? The intent to turnaround their under-performers. The drive to create a culture of excellence within the team, where each individual gets habituated to delivering a superior performance…continuously…consistently. Do our managers have the willingness to not just create COEs, but create a built-to-last culture? Do our leaders have the passion, and more importantly compassion, to don the mantle of an empathetic Coach?

Most of us have been managers. Be it while managing people, projects or even in many tasks in our personal space. Some of us may also have had the opportunities to be leaders. What then is the difference between managers, leaders and coaches? Aren’t all these roles basically created to serve a single purpose i.e. to ensure Success of projects, people or teams. Why then so many terminologies? Based on my understanding so far, managers and leaders are necessarily much broader roles involving one-to-many relationships and impact. However, a coach necessary takes the mantle of someone more closer, relatable and personal. A more one-to-one relationship. The canvas for managers and leaders is much larger, focusing on a range of activities and processes driven by people and their diverse competencies. On the other hand, a Coach takes a more inside-out approach of focusing on an individual, nurturing and shaping him while trying to attain the desired outcomes.

Did you ever wonder why people hire personal fitness trainers instead of working out on their own? It’s simple. The trainer pushes them beyond their comfort zone and can get them to do much more than they thought was possible. Why do people need someone to motivate them? I am not sure, but when it’s done right, that person can do much more. While it’s the same body doing the same exercises, someone is putting them in a different mindset. The trainer is telling them they can do it. They believe it and that belief allows them to achieve much more. This is also effective at work and that’s where the timely presence of an emphatic and compassionate Coach can work wonders. People can meet tighter deadlines. They can add more features. They can build a better stakeholder experience. They just don’t believe they can do it because it would require them to be uncomfortable. A Coach, talks to people, understands them and their self-inflicted boundaries and eventually pushes them outside of their comfort zones. You will learn very quickly that your team can accomplish much more than you think it can. Push and push hard. Most people don’t want to stretch beyond their skill set if it involves risking their existing position. Encourage them to “lean in” to the opportunity and discover what else they can do beyond the status quo.

 

This is the first chapter in a three part piece on 'Compassionate Leadership'. Do check the follow-up second part to know more about your role as a Compassionate Leader. 

 

This Women's day, celebrating the girl child, India's woman of tomorrow

This Women's day, celebrating the girl child, India's woman of tomorrow
 

Every night, I ask them tough questions about Math, English and Science.

They in turn fox me by asking tougher questions about life, goodness and kindness.

“Papa – why do you break the signal? And why then, do you pay the cop?

You ask us to be content and not change our bicycle.

Why then every 2 years, do you change your job?

What exactly do you do in your job?” (ummm….tough one, lemme think…)

“Why do you spend so much time on Facebook?”

To the world outside, it’s easier to get away with generic answers like,

The power of social media, the relevance of your online avatar,

The reach of the digital medium, the advantages of networking.

To the kids at home, it’s much difficult to decode this hot-air into a simple answer about

Why do I spend so much time on Facebook?

Every night, I narrate to them feel-good tales about the Sun, Moon, Stars, the Gods and Angels.

They in turn ask me feel-real questions about humanity and love.

“Papa, while you have a holiday every Saturday and Sunday, why does the maid in our home comes every day?

Why do you spend so much time in the shower? Why can’t you use a bucket instead?

You say that Gods are basically our friends, why then we can’t take cameras inside temples?

Why can’t we click our snaps with our favourite Gods and post the pictures on Facebook?”

Every night, I introduce them to various domestic and wild animals.

They in turn ask me, “Why then do we cage animals? Why do we eat them?”

Yes, every night, I try to take them to a wonderful world of fantasy.

They in turn, bring me back to the real world, and most often unfair world we live in.

Every night, I try to make them feel-good. In return, they try to make me Feel.

Every night, I try to make them Science geniuses, Math Whizkids and English experts.

In short, every night, I try hard to make them super-human.

They in turn, simply cut the crap, and try to make me Human.

Every evening, the leader in me, returns home with a great sense of accomplishment.

Every night, the small wonders at home, make me realise, how trivial my so-called achievements have been.

Every night, is yet another reinforcement of the fact that “Child, truly is the father of a man”.

Every night, as I talk to them about the grandiose ways we can change the world;

They bring me to face with the fact that the real change has to start within.

Every night, the smart dad in me tries to teach them the ways of life. The Art and Science of Living.

The young ones, in many subtle ways, re-introduce to me, the lost art of Loving.

Every night is yet another starry, dreamy-eyed time of learning and fun for them.

Every night I teach them. Every night, they educate me.

Nothing Special about Special 26

Nothing Special about Special 26

 

Must be amongst the most predictable ‘unpredictable’ film ever. If you’ve seen the promos, well you know most of it. Neither does Special 26 have the grandeur of other heist series like Dhoom or Race, nor does it have the sexiness quotient of a very similar 2002 film ‘Aankhen’ or even the ‘hits-you-like-a-bullet’ unexpected twist of ‘A Wednesday’.  

Yes Special 26 does climaxes into an ‘unexpected twist’ towards the end. However, it’s kind of too tame and another of those expected ‘unexpectations’ to shake you from your slumber. On the whole, it’s a neat flick that keeps you engaged with a very competent cast (Anupam Kher and Manoj Bajpayee are superb!) , interesting premise, period settings of the 80s-era, a high-octave background score (again very reminiscent of the 80s with trumpets and all) and one absolute fab chase sequence!

However, there are far too many dampeners to dilute the kick of this ‘could have been supercool’ heist fiesta. To begin with is the dull, tepid and extremely lacklustre romantic track that sticks out like a sore thumb. An absolute unnecessary distraction that does nothing more than killing the nicely built-up momentum on many key occasions. Couple that with a ‘dumb as dumbbell’ female lead like Kajal Agarwal (of Singham fame) and what you have is the dreariest romantic track in recent times. Akshay Kumar too looks the most uninterested and uninspired in this part of the movie and it shows. Zero chemistry out here!

But then, you were never promised a heart-tugging love story in Special 26. So then why to complain? The issue is ‘Yes Exactly!’ Special 26 was meant to be a thrill-a-minute chor-police adventure to keep you on your edge-of-the-seat throughout. What then was the burning necessity to bog it down with an uninspired romantic angle? Why can’t even the most sorted of film makers like Neeraj Pandey keep it single-track and avoid the whims of the box-office. Another Akki-starrer ‘Oh My God’ avoided any romantic distraction in recent times, and was a huge success at that!

A romantic angle increases the box-office prospects of a movie, increases the face-value in the posters and gives it a more broader audience base, right? In this case, absolutely wrong! A romantic track over here, which is further dragged by a rank bad actress, does exactly the opposite. Time and again, it crops up needlessly with those soft and boring so-called silent-love scenes and punctures the pace.

Another complaint is the thinking-man’s Akshay Kumar. Yes, it’s good to go on a ‘acting’ mode once in a while, establish your credentials as a fine actor and wash away the sins of brain-drainers you are normally associated with. However, it makes little sense when you go completely against the grain and don’t even attempt to cash-in on the strengths of your persona. At time it suffocating to watch an otherwise energetic Akki without a single chase (which could’ve been there) or an action scene (which definitely could’ve been there) to top-up the entertainment quotient of the movie. So in a nutshell, the movie depicts its biggest commercial trump-card, Akki in certain things which he should definitely not be doing (like puppy romance) rather than certain things which he should definitely be doing (action).  The songs (despite there being just a couple of them) test your patience and further slows down this already slowing thrill express.

To sum it up, a major part of Special 26 is spent on building it up nicely for the final heist. But somehow, all of it doesn’t quite add-up in the final reels. It definitely ends well and smart, but not with the ‘Oh God Damn!’ kind of feeling that gripped you post ‘A Wednesday’.  It’s more like a Manoj Night Shyamlan trying too hard to bring in that sixth sense-kinda unbelievable twist in all his subsequent films.  But still, always falling too short to match-up to the sheer ‘Oh My God-ness’ of the first time he did that in Sixth Sense.

In the end, Special 26 is a decently thrilling and entertaining film. But at the same time, it’s a mixed-bag of many missed opportunities of what it could have been. Definitely a bit more tighter, a bit more unpredictable. If the makers can still edit-out those Unspecial 26 minutes of icy-cold romance, it still might become a more saucy and special flick!