TOXIC PEOPLE

Whether it is your professional life or personal life, you will always encounter certain toxic people. These people will sap out the energy from you, frustrate you and will make it difficult for you to succeed.

It is extremely important to try and stay away from such people as much as possible, keeping your mind positive and focused on the goals that you have set for yourself.

Here is a ready reckoner of a few types of toxic people that you can identify by their behavior and characteristics. Recognize them and then maintain your distance with them. In this case, the social distancing should be maintained at all times!

INNOVATION THROUGH DIVERSITY LEADERSHIP

#Innovation is not only about great insights, strong products and exemplary execution, it is also about people management as it is people who bring ideas, grow ideas, share ideas and then turn those ideas into innovation success stories.

Here are 9 ways to foster innovation through diversity #leadership that will help you manage your teams, your launches and your innovation pipeline.

SYMPATHY NOT SOLUTIONS

Sometimes, when our team members, peers, colleagues or family members come to us and start telling us their problems, our immediate reaction is to start offering them solutions.

However, we need to remind ourselves that a lot of times, they already have and know the solutions. They are not looking for solutions but rather someone who can give them a sympathetic ear to just hear them out, let them vent out their feelings, listen to them without judging or giving them help.

It is not easy to resist offering help, but the ability to know when someone needs sympathy and when solutions shows the strength of your own judgment.

FIVE QUESTIONS TO ASK

If you ever get stuck, asking yourself whether you should be putting effort, money or your time behind an idea, ask yourself these five questions that advertising legend David Ogilvy recommends.

Chances are, that you will know whether the idea is worth betting on or just letting go. This could show you and your business the path to success, to innovation, to legacy, and more! 

CAREER FUEL

'The secret of success in life is to be ready when the opportunity knocks'.

How do you get ready? By building career fuel as Brian Fetherstonhaugh from Ogilvy mentions. 

According to him, all successful leaders have an abundance of career fuel so that the growth engine keeps on moving the individual forward without coming to a halt.

How is your tank looking? Are you filling up on all three fuel that form a part of career fuel?

2020 ROGER FEDERER COIN

If you are a tennis fan, enthusiast or aficionado, then chances are that you love Roger Federer or admire his achievements. 

He is often hailed as G.O.A.T (Greatest of All Time) because of his consistency, longevity, passion, humility and hunger for more. With 103 tour-level titles, including 20 Grand Slams to his name, it is hard to debate that at all. 

The Swiss Government tends to agree too. In honor of his achievements, they have done something unusual. 

It is for the first time in history that a living person will be immortalized on a Swiss coin: Roger Federer! 

Swissmint, the official mint of the Swiss government, will be producing a special silver coin bearing Roger Federer's name and face. The heads side of the coin shows #Federer playing a one-handed backhand.

The denomination of this coin will be 20 CHF =~20 USD. It is a limited edition and a total of 55,000 such coins will be released. 

The coin went on sale from Dec 2nd. As soon as Federer posted the link himself, the website got 2.5 million hits and crashed a few times. 

In May 2020, the Swiss mint will be releasing a Roger Federer gold coin with a 50-franc denomination as well. 

Now if that does not define #success and #legacy in capital letters, then what does?

STOCK RETURNS

Check out the tweet shot below. It shows the stock returns in some of the big companies in USA since the time of their IPO. 

Equity returns of such gigantic proportions are enough to change your lives, provided you invested well in time with a good amount.

There are some clear lessons here: 

1. It is extremely important to identify the diamonds. You may not know it then, but you have to go on your gut and belief. 

2. Patience always pays. It would have been difficult to hold back on to these shares if someone invested in them since IPO because of their returns. However, if people have still held on to it, then they would be laughing all the way to the bank today.

3. If the company and its business model is good, you can enter at any given point of time - either as an angel investor in its pre IPO days, or during the IPO or even as a shareholder who buys these stocks when they are still priced at a reasonable price. 

Have you been lucky and smart to find such gems early enough?

THE POWER OF COMPOUNDING

Sometimes when you start a journey, the small consistent steps that you take seem like they are not moving you closer to your destination, but when you look back, you will be amazed at the compounding effect and the distance that you have traveled.

It is no wonder that famous scientist, Albert Einstein called Compounding as the eighth wonder of the world. 

So remember consistency matters. Results will come. 

POSITIVE POWER OF 30X

hashtag#Positivity spreads positivity, leading to higher productivity, greater #success and amazing efficiency. Negativity, on the other hand breeds more negativity, not helping the person, the cause or the organization.
A note for every #leader, #manager, individual performer and human being! 

#positive #vibes #lesson #behaviour #life

CORE INGREDIENT FOR SUCCESS : GRIT

Grit is such an important attribute for success, it makes you achieve things that your mind would tell you as being impossible. Grit is what separates the successful people from the rest of the chaff.
One of the common qualities that you will notice in all the sports legends is grit. They just don't give up. They fall down, get up again, come back and keep doing this again and again. This is what brings consistency and longevity to their careers and their victories. I was thinking about #grit in the context of #Wimbledon and that is when it struck me that the three giants of tennis or rather the trifecta of tennis spell out grit for us!

                                           #success #sport #quality #character

Are you a Leader or Not?

Everyone is a leader in his or her own right, irrespective of their role in an organisation, in society or in the family. 

The question is whether you see yourself as a #leader or not? 

Here are some simple leadership tips that, if practiced well and consistently, can bring success to you as well as the ones around you.

#leadership #successmantra

#BookReview : Turbaned Tornado

As the title suggests, this is a book on the human marvel – Fauja Singh who started running at the age of 89 and amazed the world with the number of records that he broke. His current personal best time for the London Marathon (2003) is 6 hours 2 minutes, and his marathon record, for age 90-plus, is 5 hours 40 minutes at the age of 92, at the 2003 Toronto Waterfront Marathon. 

The book is very well researched and simply written by Chandigarh based columnist and writer Khushwant Singh, taking the reader through Fauja Singh’s life journey covering his childhood, his village, his growing up years and how he took to running. It also talks about Fauja Singh’s work for charity and how he donates all the money that he gets from running.

I can say that it is a book with lessons on #inspiration, #motivation, #persistence, #success, hard work, #perseverance, #philanthropy and much more. What makes this book really special for me is that I received this book at the centenary celebrations of #Nestle India, where I got a chance to see and hear the superhero Fauja Singh live along with his coach Harmander Singh who unleashed the potential of the Sikh Superman. That is a memory to cherish!

Formula for a Successful Movie

If you are a film-maker and you have reached this blog with the hope of getting the magic potion that will help you in delivering the next block buster, let me tell you that you will find nothing of that sort in this article. 

Calm down. Now don’t curse me if my first paragraph has left you disappointed Mr. Film Maker. Because what I will offer in this blog is a view from a common man who loves his movies and the experience that they deliver. And who knows…maybe that is what you are seeking!

Over the last few years, there have been a number of films that have filled the coffers of the producers as they turned out to be super hits. Each one had its own story, script, acting, music and other reasons for success. I do not want to delve into that. 

The thought for this blog struck me after I saw the movie Queen – the latest hit from Kangana Ranaut. Here was a movie that everyone was raving about, people were urging others to go and see it, and the movie was picking momentum week after week through word of mouth. 

After watching this movie, while I was still trying to play in my mind the various scenes and the reason for its success, a pattern emerged in front of me. Two more movie names popped in my head – Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Dil Chahta Hai. I could see a common thread between the three movies. 

Think for a moment about these three movies. Does any common thread strike you as well?

Yes, the common theme for all three movies was ‘Escape’. Escape from the mundane life, escape from a crisis situation, escape from your own feelings. 

Queen had Kangana travelling to Europe to escape and get her head out from the messy situation that she had gotten into because of her wedding being called off. 

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara had the three actors escape from their regular life and jobs to an exotic holiday to experience something new. 

Dil Chahta Hai had three escape situations. The first escape happens when the three friends decide to escape from boredom by going ahead for a holiday to Goa. The second escape happens when Aamir Khan leaves for Australia after a tiff with his friends. The third escape takes place when Aamir comes back to India to escape from the thoughts of Preity Zinta. 

Of course, just taking ‘Escape’ as a theme is no sure shot way to make a film work and nor was that the case in these three movies either. A powerful script, screenplay, acting and flow were crucial to the success of all three of them. 

But the key point that I want to make here is that the audiences lapped up these movies and came to see it again and again. This is where ‘Escape’ starts playing a key role. Human beings love to get out of the rut and experience something new, travel, see a new place, try a new activity - something which they always want to do or would love to do but circumstances, time or money does not allow them to do it as often as they would love to. 

These three movies allowed them to experience that ‘Moment of Escape’ that they crave for. Those three hours in a movie hall made people travel along with the lead actors. And when a movie makes you travel and become a part of journey, it touches a chord deep inside, it moves people and what people experience at the end of a movie is pure enjoyment. They want their friends and families to experience this emotion as well and that is why they recommend others to go for such a movie. 

I am not sure whether you agree or disagree, but to me this came out as a strong and common theme across these three movies.