Management skills of house wives!!

Today, the world turned on its head. Even a paan wala wants to be an MBA post graduate. Laloo Prasad Yadav gives management lessons at the IIMs. Things have changed, and the people's mindset regarding management also is changing. They tend to learn management lessons from everyone. Even a small lesson learnt from someone like a boss of a minuscule hotel, which when implemented at a higher level in our scheme of things can prove to be handy.

Learning never stops, it is not a be all and end all. It is the path to be followed to attain higher excellence in life. Just by ignoring someone because he is so inconspicuous, we are just underestimating the lesser unknown potential of the management guru inside him. Where is all this going.

Today when you join an organization, at our young age, we just join as a trainee, or some very small position. As years go by, we hop jobs, we go places and after a great period of time, we eventually become bosses. We have a group of young trainee's under our guidance. This is as per our rankings, job skills and also through the rating, which is eventually given by your boss. Similarly, today's house wives, get married stay with their mother-in-law, work very hard to reach some position. Have to struggle on their own, and as the time goes on eventually get a maid servant or a daughter-in-law, on whom they can show their command.

Just some days back, I saw my mom beating the hell out of our house maid. Listening comprehension may give you good marks at GRE and other competitive exams, listening management gives you just the skill and exposure, of how to handle certain situations which can be mapped to the current scenario. The way my mom was being tough on the maid, made me pity the maid. I even commented, "If you are so hard on her, she might leave!!"

But mom being the management guru she is, has seen more than a dozen maids like her. She is more than just experienced to handle the situation with such elan. She made the maid sweat it out and made her a cup of coffee and some light talk at the end of it. She talked about some personal issues, like "how is your son?"; "what is he doing now?" just to make the maid feel comfortable.

I surely felt that the maid will leave, because of the way my mom manhandled her. But to my surprise she did not. She got a pay hike the, next month because of her neat job. I thought may be the maid did not have any other place to go and had to rely on us. Even thought went kaput, as she worked for more than 3 places excluding our place.

The maid lived in a slum, which was demolished for road widening and land development. She was given a home far away from our place. So she had to leave us. When she eventually left, she came home, hugged my mom and cried. (very emotional farewell) She bid good bye. I never in my wildest of dreams, expected this, after the first episode. I have to accept that my mom has better management skills than I do. Again, I learnt some lessons of how to handle people, how to manhandle them to get better results, from the woman handler==my mom!!

Dhirubhaism!!

Vision, people say is not what all can see. Swami Vivekananda once said, "Even if I would loose my eyes, I would not have lost my vision." What is this vision, which makes people so great! Listening to their heart all the time, overcoming many obstacles, and winning at last. A vision that makes people constantly run behind it to acheive it. A vision that makes them think beyond everything that a normal man can perceive.

Dhirubhaism, is a book written by A G Krishnamurty, gives us glimpses of one of the visionary of 20th century, Dhirubhai Ambani. Born in a remote village in Gujarat, how can a normal guy like him with very less knowledge, leap to such an heights.

The book explains the qualities of the man. The way he man-handled all his situation and people. He was a genius in persuading people, in getting his things done. His aim was to acheive his goals. He would adopt all the possible way he can to reach his goal. A buring desire for success. A ruthless ambition, coupled with intuited vision. A great combination of dream and hardwork.

3 things that impressed me was, "The arm around the shoulder"- This part explains how down to the earth Dhirubhai was. He would put his arm around any guy and explain him what he needs. This kind of a gesture makes the subordinates under him at complete ease. This made Dhirubhai break the ice, talk freely and most of all nip any kind of dissatisfaction or anger in the bud.

The second thing I liked was the fact that, Dhirubhai, was optimistic to the core. Never did he think he will not win. Even at the face of defeat, he would be optimistic and find a way out. At several patches of his life, he has faced number of hard ships. Phases where he has had losses. But he never went down, always came back. That is a the tenacity of the man, who always wants to win come what may.

The third thing that struck me was the his "magic of thinking big". He had a great vision and always thought very big. All his project would be so gigantic and enormous in size that his competitors would not dare to put a foot into it. They would rather play safe. When he used to work in Aden for a pertoleum firm, his dream was to own one such firm. Every person at that time would have laughed at him. But he never gave up. Reliance petrochemicals, was the dream come true.

The author at certain locations could have avoided reputations. The fact that his advertising company Mudra, started from stratch, in just nine years became among the top three in India, has been repeated multi number of times. He could have added more stories of Dhirubhai itself, that would have made the reader more curious.

Nevertheless, a good book, just 96 pages, could be read in an hour or two. It has been 2 days that I have read this book; but vision of the great man still strikes me. To add to all in a recent interview, Sunil Mittal, CEO Airtel-Bharti, said openly that, "we cannot match the plans of Reliance". He said "Reliance plans are so mind bogglingly huge, that Bharati cannot match it". That is how huge Dhirubhai and his vision stand.