Business on mind

This morning I was accompanied by my brother for breakfast at a hotel. We ordered the staple food of South India, Idly+Vada (Idly and Vada are dishes made for breakfast across many parts of South India). We got our orders served. Once we finished with Idlies, we tasted the Vada. It was crispy and amazingly tasteful. I was totally impressed with the taste and feel of the Vada. Immediately, I extended my heart full of appreciation towards the server and appreciated the good quality of the Vada. Instantly the reply came from him, which was, "Shall I serve you one more Vada?"

 

The server didn't forget business just because he was flattered by an appreciation. Most of us resort to saying a humble 'Thank You' whenever we are appreciated for some good work of ours. The time of flattery takes us on cloud 9 and we forget everything else at that time. But the server was not of one of that kind of people. He had a presence of mind to convert the appreciation received into a sale which could benefit his hotel. Presence of mind on what is the need of the hour should be more on our mind before any flattery tries to take its place. There are lot of tricksters out there in the market who will try to take everything from you just by flattering you with their sweet and nice words. We must be shielded to such flattery. Even if it's a genuine appreciation we must try to take advantage of it as to how it can benefit our business and organization. Only then do we make the right us of what comes our way.

 

Taking advantage of an appreciation to convert into a sale is no mean job to do. In fact it's the right thing to do because when a customer is happy, he is bound to appreciate your product/service. At that time, if you can serve him with more facilities which might come at a cost, it will definitely serve the customer. As long as the king is served he loves to be the king. Since customer is the king, servitude attitude towards him is an important requirement to grow your business. No matter how many appreciations or humiliations come your way, make sure to have your business and its targets keep running on your mind continuously.

SEPC - Sports Equipment Procurement Campaign

PLAY FORWARD is an organization from Australia which through community programs use sport as an avenue to build confidence and self esteem amongst young Australians aged 8-13. They aim to impact disengaged and marginalised children, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, whose school completion rates are well below the completion rates for other students.Play Forward harnesses the power of sport as a vehicle for social change. OSCAR - Organization for Social Change, Awareness & Responsibility is an organization from Mumbai, India which aims at encouraging children to continue their education through the medium of sports. IU Cares from India tied up with the Australian project PLAY FORWARD and OSCAR and decided to carry out the campaign named as SEPC - Sports Equipment Procurement Campaign in India.

 

We started this project around the month of November and initially this project gained wide interest among lot of teams who were willing to take it up. Whenever a lot many people take up something ultimately it ends up in no one doing it. The same happened with SEPC and the different sets of people who took up the project fell short of their commitment but IU Cares was hell-bent to make sure that this amazing campaign materialised into reality. Hence the team IU took the entire responsibility of making sure that the task of SEPC happened within 24 hours of time frame and we are glad to let the world know that we have achieved our target.

 

The target was taken precisely at 4pm on April 2nd,2013 and right after that 5 dedicated volunteers from different parts of Bangalore were selected and were informed to contact 5 or more relatives or neighbours or friends or classmates or strangers and collect at least one old sports equipment from them which they would otherwise throw away. Within just 4 hours of allotment of the task, the first volunteer by name Srinivas KN from National college reached with his sports items including cricket bat, stumps, jersey and shuttle badminton rackets. The next day on April 3rd,2013, old toys and sports equipment from 4 more volunteers reached within 3pm and finally it was a quick grand successful campaign of SEPC. More than 50 sports artciles were collected within a matter of 24 hours of time. IU Cares takes this opportunity to appreciate all the volunteers- Srinivas KN, Nivedita Raj, Aditya Kanbur, Rajath, Jayanth and Shylesh KS who made SEPC a successful campaign. All of these sports articles shall be distributed to under-privileged kids at the earliest.

You can look for more information on all these social projects on the following links;http://www.resolutionproject.org/content/vanessa-picker
http://www.iucares.org/partner-projects.php
http://www.play-forward.org/#!about_us/csgz

The name is Ashok Shankar Rathod

Ashok Shankar Rathod is the boy who invested just a single football to start his organization OSCAR. No doubt that he is already quite famous because of the 67 newspaper articles that have featured him and the numerous TV channels that have interviewed him. Still I wanted to document his success story in my blog as a small gift of gratitude for the amazing lessons that he taught me. Let me give a small introduction of him first.

Ashok Rathod is a boy from a slum in Mumbai who started teaching football to the others kids in his locality. Then he motivated them to continue their education keeping his football coaching as a fulcrum. Because of this initiative of his more than 600 kids continued their education without dropping out of school. He was even responsible for 150 girls to enter schools. He was awarded the RELIANCE Real HERO award as well. He has represented India at international level youth conferences and has travelled to foreign countries 9 times within the age of 24. His organization OSCAR - Organization for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility has reached 6 states of India and has impacted 1500 kids.

Key learnings from Ashok Rathod which happened when I met him on November 4th,2012 were as follows; Patience and courage are must if you want to achieve your dreams and visions. As we grow up we take a lot from the society and hence it's necessary for us to give back to the society as well. People will tease, doubt and ridicule us on our way but we must be focussed on our work and towards the completion of our work. Many might even not support, still we must be ready to work single-handedly on our goals. I really thank Mr.Ashok Rathodji from the bottom of my heart for the immense learning and the example that he has set for the world to follow in coming times. Friends! you can mail your thanks which I shall forward to Ashok sir on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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2 minutes to respond

Yesterday morning I was watching the Presidential election debate between Governor Mitt Romney and the US President Barrack Obama. Just before the start of the debate, the host was informing both the gentlemen about the conditions of the debate. In one of the conditions he mentioned that both men would get just 2 minutes only to respond to each other's comments or questions. This point caught my attention immediately. Just 2 minutes ie just 120 seconds to respond at a level where the future of America would get decided. I was left bewildering at this point and was pondering over all my previous encounters where in people took days to make a simple decision.

Time is such a crucial and an important factor that it sometimes teaches its own value by the loss or shortage of it. I have observed many a times that people invest lot of time in planning and decision-making rather than in action and execution. For a simple decision of taking forward one's own life, people think of all the pros and cons of making the decision. The heads of many institutions and organizations take days to consult with all thier staff and students to implement a simple project which would inturn benefit their own staff and children. A person who is leading a team or a company or even a country like America should be so confident of his intellectual capability and visions that s/he should be able to believe in himself and the decisions that s/he is going to make without the consult of all the members of the community. People are diverse and have diverse opinions. Moreover not all men are educated to the same extent to make a decision which can be beneficial for all. That is the exact reason why we elect and select a leader who can take the team or company or a country forward. This leader should be capable enough to take decicions quick enough which can push the progress faster through action rather than wasting time by involving in unnecessary discussions with host of people. Even if such discussions are to be considered, they must be done with people of really high calibre like the board of directors or the ministry and should be concluded quickly.

Friends! many a times opportunities will knock your doors and will not even give you 120 seconds to respond. You will have to be on your toes to take decisions and move ahead instead of spending time on thinking and evaluating as to what can happen in the future. There is no fun in having discussions or debates for hours together. Every hour of talk should be followed by at least ten hours of action. Only then the quality of our talk also can be respected. Please do let me know your opinions on this on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Leverage of SUCCESS

I hope everyone of you have heard of the example of lifting a big stone with the help of a small stone and a lever. Here the big boulder is the load to be lifted, the point where the lever is held on the small stone is the fulcrum and at the other end of the lever the effort is applied to achieve the movement. Similar to this, the analogy is how we can do big burdensome work with the help of small resources available around us. In the example the big boulder doesn't get moved if either the lever doesn't exist or the small stone is not present. Also if the lever and small stone are used separately we can't achieve the task. Both lever and the small stone have to be used in the synchronous manner to accomplish the goal. Once these conditions are fulfilled the effort is leveraged through the small stone to move the big stone. Once this is done even the success is leveraged by the small stone. Here is where we enter the topic of LEVERAGE of SUCCESS.

Team work has been a very prime topic in the current world scenario about which I have talked about in one of my previous blogs. In the present blog let's see the post scenario when the team work has achieved success and how it can be leveraged across the team to grow success even bigger. For example, consider an employee of a certain company who is working in one of the divisions. If the company is big enough to have clients all over the world, then whenever this employee meets any stranger he would be representing his company. He would talk about the sales, clients, products, deals and everything about his company with the other person. Even if he is just a normal employee who is not involved in the sales or clients consultation organizations, still he would love to talk about the success of his company in those regards. If Reliance pertochemicals has made good profits, then the people working in Reliance Communication will also use this success story to promote inspite of not belonging to that division of Reliance. I hope these examples have given you clear idea by what I mean by leverage of success. We human beings are social beings. Somewhere or the other we represent an organization or a community or a team. Though individual efforts are highly important for success we need to learn how to utilize the current success to build the future success. At that time you're at your will to utilize rightly the success of the other divisions of your organization to promote your work. Use one success to build another one on top of it. This is what I clearly mean by 'Leverage of SUCCESS'.

Similarly when we see this topic from the individualistic perspective, an individual himself represents an organization. He can definitely perform lots of functions courtesy the skills and the wonderful human body blessed upon him by God. Today most of them are losing their inner capacity by comparing their skills with that of the other in one particular work and feeling inferior. Everyone is good in atleast one activity, some in studies, some in sports, some in art, some in speaking etc. Recognise the task at which you're an expert at. Read through the methodology at how you became so proficient in that particular arena. First of all celebrate the success of being good at one skill. Think through that pattern and learn how you became good in that area and apply the same logic to strengthen yourself in the other areas where you feel you need to excel at. Efforts yield success, efforts plus the lessons from previous success yield the next success in much lesser time.

Success is undefined. Its unique for every individual's perception. Please share how you will use the leverage of success formula in your life on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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