The First Center of Excellence

If you ask any young kid in my country what she wants to be when she grew up, you wouldn’t be surprised if the kid mentioned the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Kalpana Chawla, Dr. Kalaam and so on. And why not be, these individuals are role models in their respective fields. They are looked upon as gods who exhibit certain qualities that captivate a young mind. They set the benchmarks for achievement, for excellence.

As much as this is a good thing that kids can differentiate the best from the rest, I sometimes feel saddened that the chosen role model is not from within your own family. When was the last time you heard a kid saying "I want to be a great engineer like Papa when I grow up", or "I want to be a great Doctor like Mama". This could be attributed to the parent deliberately belittling their jobs in the eyes of their kid, so that the kid aspires to be something which the parent thinks is more superior. Well, if that is the case, then the parent is inadvertently infusing discrimination in the mind of the kid - a lack of dignity of labor. This is not a small problem.

The other, seemingly subtle reason could be that the parent is not exhibiting those qualities which the child looks upon as exemplary. To the parent, it's like a performance appraisal gone too badly. This is perhaps a grim reminder that the parent might not after all, be doing justice to her job, her responsibilities.

I believe one of the biggest achievements you can have in your life is to be a role model for your own kid. To get there, one would need to reach a level of sustained performance and peerless excellence in the eyes of your own kin. The first center of excellence you would need to be a part of is your own home.

Frugality

It is a point of time when birthdays and anniversaries can be remembered by checking which major bank or financial institution collapsed on that day. The newspapers don’t seem to have enough of pay cuts and layoffs. To top it all, the communication from the corporate houses are sober, at best.

People who have seen it all have many a quote to share - "It's too good a crisis to waste", "Wherever there are adversities, there are tremendous opportunities" and so on. What does this all mean to each one of us? Is it just for the senior management and leadership teams to think what to make of this situation? I guess not - it starts with every individual.

I believe it starts with frugality. The best analogy is the survival of wildlife in African plains in the thick of summer, after months of lush green abundance in the rainy season. As summer moves in, food gets scarce, water scarcer. The wildlife has evolved to deal with it - animals slowly switch to frugal mode. They expend lesser energy, conserve water content in the body and they survive, and survive well.

Professionals in this harsh economic climate would need to evolve traits which helps them survive well. For us, being frugal doesn’t just entail reducing spending. It is not just about saving fuel, water, electricity or paper. It is also about avoiding the wastage of one of most important resources - time. A conscious effort to achieve more with lesser time goes a long way in making one deal with adversity. It means being in a state of constant hurriedness to deliver. Time, at this hour, is more than money.

I always think about the recession as the "Deluge", and it takes great amount of preparedness and differentiability from a professional to get on to the "Ark", not just to survive, but to survive and excel.