MESSAGE FOR READERS ACCESSING THIS PAGE FOR THE FIRST TIME
What is creation? Creation is a lousy word. It’s a lousy word that confuses what you really do to perform a simple little procedure. Creation means create something out of nothing. In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. Okay, only God can do that. We can’t do that: We’re human. So let’s throw creation out, and let’s talk about connectivity. What you are trying to do is connect things together.You’re trying to practice connectivity.
– Eugene Schwarz
I like reading quotes. I have read many. As Eugene Schwarz would say, I am now practicing connectivity by writing down my own quotes & short-burst expressions. I am very sure what I say has been said before. I believe I become something more in the act of saying things my way. I learn to connect. Something I value.
Every now & then, I will be updating this list. To see how I view what I said once upon a time, to feel good about myself & to be inspired to connect more and write more.
QUOTES BEGIN
The surer we are of a thing in general, the surer we will ignore it in particular.
Everything about the armed forces is ultimately designed to enshrine just one thing at the exclusion of all others – the ‘will’ to fight.
To think is to be free
Trust is a continuing leap of faith.
The freedom denied to actors due to their celebrity status makes them seek freedom in living imagined lives on the screen.Spurs performance.
The music we grew up with,the songs that became our life-anthems in our formative years..years down the line; they become classics – to us.
The one who has done it.The one who is detached about it.The one who is affected by it.The one who is responsible for it – Ask these folks.
My conscience is having guilt-pangs about always knowing what is right.
When you leave your opponent with very little to lose in a perennial contest,you gift him freedom to maneuver & become dangerous.
The boundaries of a social discipline are a product of human perception.
If only we could perceive & feel in our gut how much of our ill health is our own doing.
If we can consider clean india as a lost cause & then embrace it with fervour,we are onto something bigger than a campaign.
There is a fine line between serving with dedication & becoming indispensable.If we cross the line,we end up deluding ourselves.
Family is a force of gravity.Helps you stay grounded!
There is light inside the tunnel and not at the end of it.
Mainstream media favours easy articulation.Suave talkers are preferred over frontline doers.
There is something about a squirrel. Makes its surrounding environs soft & fragile.
Want to see our future?Keep fingers immersed in soapy water for a long time.Take them out.See the tips of your fingers on the inside.
One purposeful task can get you going on any given day.
We assume an artist has to have liberal values.
A strategic decision implies a tricky choice & a big risk.
A great leader is done a disservice by followers who stop thinking because of their full faith in the leader’s thoughts.
All too often we put a leader on a pedestal to convince ourselves of being on the ground & far away from emulating the leader.
The best eulogy for a leader is action to make the vision a reality.
The more Narendra Modi holds sway over public consciousness,the more perception-fuelled businesses must calibrate.
The joke’s on us when we laugh at Aalia Bhatt!A smart woman is a woman who knows when to play dumb.We play smart ,get zilch.She gets it all!
No company or product can enchant forever.It is in the nature of being human.
Those who train & teach are blessed.The deep quest for learning always awakens something akin to the spiritual.
Test of five-star cuisine:Serve it at home in modest cutlery & don’t say where it is coming from.
There exist people who eat simple dal & rice.They garnish it with gratitude & imagination & are blessed with contentment we lack in a feast.
The best way to clean is to desist from making it dirty.
In PR you celebrate the success of an event because the client sees it as one that moment.If it’s that fickle a basis,prepare to be surprised!
We must applaud fighting spirit as much if not more than the medals & trophies.Applauding the spirit is nourishing the source.
If you are being swept away by euphoria, you are not riding the wave.
Values create technology.Values make technology usable. Technology operates in a way that makes it less obvious.
If livelihood depends on goodwill & reputation & the truth endangers it,courage is a core value in the work you do.
If we lack basic clarity on what really matters,using advanced technology will only serve to make it intractable.
What if the how-to of success is deadly dull stuff that the world conspires to hide so as to make a living out of it?
People don’t learn at seminars & conferences.They get informed.
Weariness is a saving grace.It is difficult to acknowledge that.
If I am not confused or clueless,I know I am on familiar ground.When I am on familiar ground,I am not learning anything new.
A blind commuter is the best role-model for passenger safety in Mumbai local train travel.No taking anything for granted.
Security staff scans baggage on screen terminal at Mumbai Metro.Paper with unsolved crossword puzzle in his hands.Age-old challenge-Routine.
In an argument getting out of hand,a choice may present itself. Persist till it explodes or defuse it into a comical farce.
Brevity is the soul of wit. Brevity is also the cloak of jargon.
Why are they called in-laws?Perhaps,its to invoke the law against murder & protect them.Given the rage they incite in the name of family!
Recruiters go dizzy at prospects of social hiring.The unsexy task of helping clients achieve self-clarity risks being glossed over.
There surely was a time in the history of humankind when to seek shelter as it started raining would have been the most unusual thing to do!
The fear of being disliked makes many leaders ask less of self & others.What passes for success is an underachievement.
Why don’t we need motivation to crib?
Kids in a cramped school van enjoy being cramped.They use the momentum to fall on top of each other & have a jolly good laugh.
Nonsense makes sense.How else can we recognise it.
If I don’t find answers to my question,do I need to search for a question I know the answer to?And if I am able to search,was it a question?
The best way to know whether a new gadget is intuitive to use is by handing it to a toddler & then you sit back and observe.
The essence of leadership remains unchanged for all time.The lack of effective leadership makes people search for something ‘new’.
The dust gathering on your book shelf can stir you.E-readers cannot create dust.A sprinkling of dust can trigger deep thought on all things.
We don’t really buy books with the intention to read.We buy to convince ourselves on caring enough.Our care gathers dust on the book shelf!
I can have either this or that.Who says so?I say so.Why?I don’t know.A habit of being made to think & reason that way.When I can have both!
Some people are so grumpy at the help counter,the words out there should read -‘Why should I help you?’
A question with no outward response has triggered multiple answers in the heads & hearts of those present.
The sun sets everyday.We have it in us to get ecstatic about the sunset.Many times over.Again & again..What a gift!
A question needs to have at least two answers for it to stimulate any learning.
Every discipline strives to show how it is different.Success is in showing how it is different & connected. A crucial miss.
A dog’s tail communicates better than a man’s tongue.
It is not ‘the’ answer.It is a basis for action.
Do what we are.In figuring out what we love,we tie ourselves in knots.We look for a pedestal.We stand our ground to know what we are.
How do they select the painting or artifact in the men’s cloakroom at a 5-star? How should the artist feel about it?
When we all agree that something is good & find it is not happening;perhaps the way to make it happen is to disagree about something,anything!
More fascinating than any celebrity is the meaning we create & seek out of the idea. The person who is the celebrity never does matter.
The art of celebrity culture is to make them human enough for us to relate to & mystical enough for us to marvel about them.
We never know celebrities.If we get to know them, they become us. And who wants them to be us.We want to be them.We decide to not know them.
A sentiment that gets hurt on religious grounds is a human sentiment.The Gods must be amused at the offence taken on their behalf!
Birds shiver in deathly fear when crackers go off.Disregard for other forms of life is a not so subtle sign of how insensitive we are.
Astronauts working & living on the International Space Station experience 16 sunrises and sunsets each day. Wow! How magical must that be!
The prospect of virtual working is an invitation for thinking leaders to revisit fundamental assumptions on what makes work work!
The cost of communication is negligible. Time is as precious as ever.Cost has made us diminish value.
In PR,one always justifies ‘first’ the field or business they are in as being good for society.Specifics rest on this sole foundation.
If Sachin Tendulkar needed Dennis Lilee to make him consider batting as his core talent,we have a right to take time in finding our groove!
We need to uncover examples where teamwork was overrated.Then we can improve upon how to go about it.We are not objective enough.
Ask a spy the agony of having to cover up good performance.Espionage knows best how critical acts of omission are.
Teamwork is crucial.Everyone concurs. What next?Perhaps the rhetoric hides something equally crucial.Individuals.Their special contribution.
In living a soldiers life,soldiers who fight each other have more in common with each other than the people they are duty-bound to protect.
We are truly meaning-making organisms.Even to say life is utterly meaningless is to confer that particular meaning on it.We cannot escape meaning.
The tension between having faith & scrutinizing the results makes us uneasy when it comes to medical care.One comes at the expense of other.
Doctors by their very vocation become decisive in nature.A few professions powerfully shape human temperament.
The more specialized the work,the more it tends to splinter the vision of the whole.
When ‘appreciative enquiry’ values a perspective that doubts its core principles,does it validate itself or negate itself?
A rainbow brings out the child in you.
Even sustainable bottom line is a penultimate measure of PR.The ultimate measure is enabling the organization to live on as public good.
Easier to celebrate known heroes than find the forgotten ones.
HR is unique among all functions because HR is ‘being’ itself…’Being’ precedes ‘Doing’ which gives birth to other functions.
A balanced scorecard is tough when new cards get added to a shuffling pack & the very things being kept score of might cause imbalance.
When people talk most about what their companies must do,the probability is high they don’t know what they themselves must do.
First real rains test the readiness of Mumbai’s drainage systems.A system has got to have flow to know if its working.
The most humanizing moment in football is when the two goalies walk together, chat,hold & wish each other luck for the lottery of shootouts.
Organizational leaders believe they can know any truth of goings-on.They know mainly the perceptions their source-people can live with.
Defense can always let in more goals than the offense can score;customer service can always lose more customers than sales can win.
If thinking out of the box is what you continuously need, the box is what you need to think about.
Actionable insights for change more often come from discerning observers outside the field.Insiders don’t do as well & they can’t accept it.
Choosing a good doctor is a remarkable buying decision.We care on our own to make the best choice..The buyer cares as much,if not more!
A barber can say you don’t need the haircut because you will eventually need one.If only others could have the same assurance.
The student surpassing the teacher is a fitting tribute to the limitless nature of human potential.
Achieve success now in a way that builds & maintains the capacity to perform in the future. Short-term success that ensures the long-term.
We get bored & distracted & that’s good.We know we are off-course.Boredom is a human response.A wake-up call to renew purpose & to refocus.
Time spent in employee engagement activities is more effectively invested in designing work that engages the spirits of people.
Leaders rarely behave bad outright.How better they can be is the vision! The vision identifies present behaviour as a stumbling block.
The higher in the organization that a training idea originates,the less likely it is to be challenged; & the greater is the need to do so!
If you can help the horse realize he is thirsty,you don’t even have to lead him to the water.If unchained,the horse will find the way!
Superbly executed tactics that owe more allegiance to core purpose than strategy end up effectively probing strategy itself for validation.
The audience in a play or a game participates in the shaping of the outcome.The audience also plays & performs.
To take responsibility for failure in a continuing endeavor is not enough.Are you then making way for new people,new ideas & new actions?
Any advice on how to succeed reflects survivor bias.The same stuff didn’t work for others & they are not around to say so.
Think dumb is better than think smart.Challenge everyone to come up with the dumbest ideas.Circumvents reason-a barrier to creativity here.
Some things when directly aimed for become intractably difficult to achieve.
What is effortless for us to initiate takes concerted effort in doing well.
When a juggler juggles multiple objects,it is not multi-tasking.The task is singular.
Do you conduct meetings for winning people’s consent?Organize them for dissent first! You can channelize the power of diverse perspectives.
If everybody agrees too quickly,chances are nobody intends to get down to doing it! Quick agreement is to bypass execution details.
Want a reliable measure of succession planning?Check how many leaders are deemed ‘indispensable’ in your organization.
In living a soldiers life,soldiers who fight each other have more in common with each other than the people they are duty-bound to protect.
When leaders clap before the show begins, their teams hear the applause of the audience.
When we read & instantly agree with the words,we already know the message & want to subtly escape the burden of implied action.
Well-known successful people:Their vulnerable struggles before success & their fragile lives after success.We know so little about both.
Is creativity at work good?Imagine a bomb disposal expert staring at a live bomb & saying,”how can I get creative here?” Start running!
Every dying profession evokes nostalgia & an impending sense of loss.Seek out the last practitioners to get to know the meaning of work.
Corporate executives are stuffed with a rich diet of leadership programs. Needed – A strategic plan to exercise their understanding!
Focussing all efforts on eliminating what we don’t want does not automatically put us on the road to getting what we want.
If you bounce too high, you will come down with a thud. Can you roll? Can you avoid the pull of gravity and leverage the power of momentum?
Abiding by the rules creates privileged access to a space where they may be effectively challenged.