Friday, April 30, 2010

Just a point

These last few years have been very demanding and a learning time for me. Last night I was pondering what did I learn in the last 10 years and I thought of doing a count down :

My top ten lessons of the decade:

10. Business is bumpy. No matter how careful you are , whatever strategy you may have and allied back up plans , it is likely that you would be hit by a hurricane or tornado. You just cannot plan for everything. Learnt to raft.

9. "Business friends " is an oxymoron. It is unwise to mix business with friendship. Fundamentally , business hinges on self interest and friendship on self less ness. Merging both is dangerous game and can only result in pain. Learnt now to keep both separate.

8. Offering help indiscriminately will do more harm than good. Nothing wrong with being called a good guy by everybody. But it would keep rising the expectations to a level which would be impossible to sustain. Learnt to prioritize help to the most deserving. ( my judgement)

7. Chaos theory is alive and kicking in life. Cause and effect study in problems will help us analyse the primary and secondary causes and form our responses but tertiary causes are absolutely unstable. Nowadays I try and catch the levers that have the greatest of influences.

6. Office Colleagues are not family. This is no way intended to be derogatory or disrespectful but as a matter of fact. We cannot take them for granted as we do with our family members ( even that can be terrible at times ). Their priorities could be very different one from our assumption of their priorities.

5.Work hard , Play hard breaks a tough boy. I no longer believe success comes out of that quality. Oftentimes it is best to soft peddle.

4. School sucks when studying , but we long for it once it is over. Life sucks more. But we do not realise that in school. I had believed somehow, life would be very pleasant once the schooling is over. But looking back during our reunion I now know better.

3.Nothing wrong in failing but staying failed is wrong. Fear of pain caused by failure inhibits us from experimenting. It may also prove very costly. However, failures are part of a journey and that journey is as important as the destination.

2. If you miss your kid’s growing years, that’s it. Suddenly we may find that our kids are no longer kids. You would be forced to treat them as adults in a dramatic transformation.

1. There is a lesson to be learnt every day…….