Happy Diwali

I like Diwali because it is a festival of lights and inspiration. Everybody, from rich to poor enjoy the Diwali religiously. When it comes to Diwali celebrations, there is a spark in the eyes of each and every person. Everybody feels excited at the thought of adorning their sweet homes with various kinds of decorative items like candles and small clay lamps.

People take time out for family, come together and do the fun during these days. The spirit of Diwali lies in spreading the light of knowledge. It teaches us to leave the path of enmity and resort to friendship. Amidst the hustle bustle of the city life, this is one time when people come together to spend some quality time with together.

Diwali is a time to turn inward and light the lamps of knowledge and truth in our hearts and minds so that we can dispel the forces of darkness and ignorance within us and allow our innate brilliance and goodness to shine forth. Goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is the principle deity associated with this festival. During Diwali we ask her for assistance in cultivating and accumulating spiritual wealth, such as compassion, forgiveness, and loving-kindness.

Wish you all Happy Diwali!

Diwali is a time to reflect on and evaluate our thoughts, words, and actions over the past year. It is a time to acknowledge and better understand our prejudices, negative behaviors, and bad habits so that we may begin the process of transforming ourselves. It is a time to discover how we can be more loving, kind, respectful, and skillful towards ourselves and others. And since all wealth, be it material or spiritual, should be shared with others who are less fortunate, Diwali is also a time to reflect on the various ways we can assist others and shine our light out into the world.

Just as the flame of a lamp always points upward, Diwali is most importantly a time to celebrate and appreciate life and to look forward to the coming year with a renewed sense of purpose and passion. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, Diwali is a reminder and an opportunity to “Be the change you want to see in the world!”

On this auspicious festival of lights, may the glow of joy, prosperity & happiness illuminate your days in the year ahead...

Happy Diwali…

Personality Types of Intrapreneur leaders...

Intrepreneur (Intrepreneurship) is an employees working passionately in the organization whose mindset is like Entrepreneur.  This is like in like growing own business, taking ownership. This requires many skills to be successful. Take a look at the business personality types and find out what you need to succeed. Are you Steve Jobs, a Visionary, or an Improver like Facebook founder?

Your business personality type are the traits and characteristics of your personality that blend with the needs of the business. If you better understand your business personality, then you can give your company the best part of you. Find others to help your business in areas you may not be prepared to fulfill.

There are 9 key types of personality and understanding each will help you enjoy your organization more and provide your company with what it needs to grow.

Begin identifying your dominant personality theme and understand how you operate in your business.

Personality Types of Intrepreneurs

1. The Improver: If you operate your business predominately in the improver mode, you are focused on using your company as a means to improve the world. Your overarching motto is: morally correct companies will be rewarded working on a noble cause. Improvers have an unwavering ability to run their business with high integrity and ethics. 

Personality Alert: Be aware of your tendency to be a perfectionist and over-critical of employees and customers. 

2. The Advisor: This business personality type will provide an extremely high level of assistance and advice to customers. The advisor's motto is: the customer is right and we must do everything to please them. Companies built by advisors become customer focused. 

Personality Alert: Advisors can become totally focused on the needs of their business and customers that they may ignore their own needs and ultimately burn out. 

3. The Superstar: Here the business is centered around the charisma and high energy of the Superstar CEO. This personality often will cause you to build your business around your own personal brand. 

Personality Alert: Can be too competitive and workaholics. 

4. The Artist: This business personality is the reserved but highly creative type. Often found in businesses demanding creativity such as web design and ad agencies. As an artist type you’ll tend to build your business around the unique talents and creativities you have. 

Personality Alert: You may be overly sensitive to your customer’s responses even if the feedback is constructive. Let go the negative self-image. 

5. The Visionary: A business built by a Visionary will often be based on the future vision and thoughts of the founder. You will have a high degree of curiosity to understand the world around you and will set-up plans to avoid the landmines. 

Personality Alert: Visionaries can be too focused on the dream with little focus on reality. Action must proceed vision. 

6. The Analyst: If you run a business as an Analyst, your company is focus on fixing problems in a systematic way. Often the basis for science, engineering or computer firms, Analyst companies excel at problem solving. 

Personality Alert: Be aware of analysis paralysis. Work on trusting others. 

7. The Fireball: A business owned and operated by a Fireball is full of life, energy and optimism. Your company is life-energizing and makes customers feel the company has a get it done attitude in a fun playful manner. 

Personality Alert: You may over commit your teams and act to impulsively. Balance your impulsiveness with business planning. 

8. The Hero: You have an incredible will and ability to lead the world and your business through any challenge. You are the essence of entrepreneurship and can assemble great companies. 

Personality Alert: Over promising and using force full tactics to get your way will not work long term. To be successful, trust your leadership skills to help others find their way. 

9. The Healer: If you are a Healer, you provide nurturing and harmony to your business. You have an uncanny ability to survive and persist with an inner calm. 

Personality Alert: Because of your caring, healing attitude toward your business, you may avoid outside realities and use wishful thinking. Use scenario planning to prepare for turmoil. 

Each business personality type can succeed in the business environment if you stay true to your character. Knowing firmly what your strong traits are can act as a compass for your organization. If you are building a team, this insight is invaluable.

(Ref: Darrell Zahorsky, Your Guide to Small Business Information)

It can’t happen in India…

Two Extreme HR Initiatives…

You may be aware about some innovative HR and management initiatives to keep the morale of employees, boost motivation and improve the productivity. But there are some strange practices which you will not believe… following are some radical experiments companies have done… however I don’t know the result…  but you will be entertained by reading this.

Dog at Oracle Japan as a Chief Employee Engagement Officer  to improve morale in office..

Dogs are good friends of human being. They are loyal and reciprocate the love for life long. Perhaps that may be the reason behind hiring dog by Oracle in Japan. Yes. Japan Oracle hired dog in office in 2010 to boost the morale and motivation of employees.  Candy, the dog would visit company offices once a week to visit the human employees and help raise their morale. The dog was given status of employee and even identity card. After periodic interval dog is retired..

Dog as Chief Fun Officer

Publishing house celebrated naked month as a part of social experiment.

Have you ever complained about the rigid dress code at your work place? Or when the mercury went soaring in those hot months of the summer, felt like stripping down to the bare minimum? Even if you have, what one publishing house, Bald Italic in San Francisco, California, did for a month will probably shock you. This was a part of social experiment. Company celebrated naked month in the office. They said that such experiments improves productivity and efficiency…oh…

Source: Office goes nude

And One Extreme News…

Man Fires Assistant For Being Too Hot and "Irresistible,"

A 32-year-old female dental assistant ended up in the unemployment line after her boss of 10 years fired her for being too darn cute and “irresistible,” which caused her dentist boss—and his wife—to view her as a threat to their marriage. This was despite the fact that the dentist considered his assistant a “stellar worker,” according to an article in Mother Jones. The all-male Iowa Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the employer acted legally and that an employer can fire a worker he or she views as an “irresistible attraction,” even if the worker had not “engaged in flirtatious behavior or otherwise done anything wrong,” according to the December 2012 magazine report.

Source: Man fires his assistant being hot

Make in India… organizations need creative leadership.

Modi government has declared the “Make In India” initiative to attract the FDI in India. This is another way to create the manufacturing base in India. When the manufacturing base is increased,  lot of dependent business start flourishing, employment is generated and it helps economy to develop as spending power of consumer also increases. However this task is not easy.

Is it just making products in India or developing products with global quality? Question still remains unsolved. This question is because, there are no inventions happened in India for last few decades. However we trumpet the old saga of inventions. We call ourselves creative and innovative, but we never think about the future. There are very few innovative ideas which goes in commercialization and end without any results, because these ideas are based on “Jugad” which really is shortcut to get the results.

There are few successes which are copied by others for failures. Just see how many e-commerce companies are there around.   

The question still remains unresolved because we hardly think innovation and creativity. Students are not allowed in schools think beyond their books. Organizations propagate creativity and innovations but doesn’t give the freedom to think differently. They give the “boundary lines” and employees are expected to think within that “boundary lines.” There are innovation, R&D labs, but I doubt how much new inventions happened in those labs. These are put for branding and getting tax benefits. There are consultants who work for you to get such exemptions. With this all, if any company is really series about innovations, they mislay the focus after 3 -4 years when they don’t get expected results in spite of huge costs.

There is another problem which is related to creative leadership. Leaders need to think differently but they also need to be creative. As creativity is the catalyst for innovation, leaders who wish to promote innovation must embody creativity and create an environment that stimulates people to be more creative and innovative.

There are two approaches to creative leadership:

• To develop a creative approach to problem solving,
• To create a culture of creativity and innovation,

Creativity, however, cannot be left to chance. Much like learning any new skill, leaders need to develop or enhance their creativity skills by learning and trying on new behaviors, and putting those into practice.

I think, we need to take it next level where we don’t only sit on computer and work on simulations, developing some grades in the products or working only on analysis on the innovations which actually is happening somewhere in US or Europe.  

Creativity is contagious. Organizations need leaders who can fire up the imagination of people and create a vibrant work environment, so that people willingly contribute and come up with out of the box solutions.