30 lessons from life and career of NR Narayana Murthy

This article is from: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/30-lessons-from-life-and-career-of-nr-narayana-murthy/articleshow/9656715.cms

NR Narayana Murthy , who steps down as Infosyschairman on August 20, is a role model for not just what he achieved but also how he did it. Here are 30 lessons from Murthy, one for each year he spent at company.

Seize Your Gandhi Moment
Murthy, a self proclaimed socialist in the mid '70s was jailed for 72 hours in Bulgaria. The experience taught him that entrepreneurship and job creation is the way to alleviate poverty.

You might fail, but get started
Learn from mistakes and move on. In 1976, Murthy founded Softronics, a company that lasted a year and a half. When he realised that his first venture wasn't taking off, he moved on.

Think Big. Don't Hesitate to Start Small
In 1981, a determined Murthy started Infosys with Rs 10,000 he borrowed from his wife. In few years, Infosys went on to become one of the largest wealth creators in the country.

Cut Yourself a Slice, Not a Large One Always
When Infosys was set up, Murthy took a pay cut while salaries of other co-founder's were increased by 10 percent. According to Murthy, a leader needs to show his or her sacrifice and commitment.

Lend a Hand and Throw in a Foot Too
After Murthy convinced seven of his colleagues, there was a problem. Nandan's future inlaws were not sure about him. Murthy met Nandan's uncle and convinced him.

Own Up, and Then Clean Up
In the '80s Infosys developed an application for a German client. Murthy noticed a single character error and informed the client immediately.

Trust in God, But Verify with Data
In God we trust, the rest must come with data, is perhaps Murthy's favourite statement. When confronted with difficult decisions, he tends to rely on data.

Keep the Faith
Infosys almost wound up in 1990. Murthy did not want to sell the company. He asked co-founders if they wanted out and offered to buy their shares. All of them stuck together.

Get Involved
Infosys won a contract from Reebok in the early '90s. Seeing the founders involvement, the software, was nick named 'Dinesh, Murthy and Prahlad.' Infy veterans still recall those days.

Sharing is Caring
After the IPO, Infosys decided to share a portion of its equity with employees. This helped them retain talent and gave employees a sense of ownership. Murthy is proud of having given away stocks worth over Rs 50,000 crore to employees.

Treat your People Good, but Your Best Better
Murthy always had a thing for good performers. And he rewarded them well. When Infosys decided to give its employees stock options, Murthy insisted that some shares be given to good performers through the 'Chairman's quota.'

Hire a Good Accountant, Even if he is Argumentative
A young, argumentative Indian, was asking too many questions at an annual general body meeting of Infosys. More impressed than irritated, he hired Mohandas Pai, who went on to help Infosys list on Nasdaq.

When in Doubt, Disclose
Keep your books clean and leave the cooking to the chef. Murthy's philosophy about being open and transparent has given the company a lot of credibility. He often says, "When in doubt, please disclose."

Leave the Family Out
Murthy told his wife that only one of them could be with the company. Murthy, along with other founders, said that none of their children would work for Infosys. This left no room for nepotism at Infosys.

Don't be a Pushover
In 1994, when General Electric wanted to re-negotiate rates, Murthy said no to selling services any cheaper. This helped Infosys not to be overly dependent on any one client.

Make hay While the Sun Shines
In late 90's, India's tech companies made use of the Y2K opportunity to make themselves known in the global market. For Infosys, it was a great opportunity to enter into long-term relationships with their customers.

Brand-aid First, Get Clinical
When the sexual harassment case against Infosys' top sales guy Phaneesh Murthy threatened to tarnish the company's brand, Murthy decided to quickly react. He let go of Phaneesh, and settled the case out of court despite Phaneesh wanting to fight it out.

Mind your Business, you'll See Things Coming
Murthy carries and updates a mental model of Infosys' business all the time. According to him, every leader must have a model, consisting of six to seven parameters that might affect business.

Keep it Simple, Not Silly
Keep your life simple and straight. That way, you get to work more and worry less. Murthy is known to be frugal with money. Despite being one of the richest Indians, he leads a simple life. However, he does not cut corners on buying books or brushing up on literature.

Founders Keepers, but Not Forever
Murthy's decision to not allow founders to continue with the company after the age of 65 set another standard for the company. This way, younger leaders at Infosys had a greater chance at the top positions.

Talent Spotting and Division of Labour
Murthy is known to have an eye for talent and a talent for dividing labour. Nandan was given sales responsibilities while Kris and Shibu did the tech stuff. N S Raghavan was asked to handle people and Dinesh was assigned quality.

Hold on to Your People but don't Cling
Letting go is never easy but its not good to cling on to your colleagues either. Amongst the founders, Ashok Arora, Nandan Nilekani and K Dinesh have quit Infosys. Infy veteran Mohandas Pai has also left Infosys.

Give, it only gets you more
In 2010, the Murthy's donated $ 5.2 million USD to Harvard University Press for a project that aims to make India's classical heritage available for generations to come. He is also supporter of the Akshaya Patra Foundation.

Do it First and Do it Right
Infosys did many things first. And most things right. For example, it was the first Indian company to list on Nasdaq. It was the first Indian company to make it to the Nasdaq 100 list and it was the first Indian company to attain the highest level of quality certification.

Perils of Being a Poster Child
Being the poster child of Indian IT industry, Infosys and Murthy have been at the receiving end of many criticisms. The company has been accused of taking away American jobs and been called a "chop shop."

Get Rich. Honestly
Rich businesses were considered to be dirty in the days when the country had a socialist bent. Infy was a company which got rid of this sentiment. Murthy, with his 'no compromise' policy on greasing palms and doing ethical business, set the standards.

Do Not be Afraid to Court Controversy
Ever since Infosys became a success, Murthy was under constant public glare. This did not deter the straight talking Murthy from courting controversy or voicing his opinions openly.

Invest in Learning
With big investments in training, development and building facilities, India's IT bell-weather has always been keen on grooming the younger generation. Murthy drove the culture of learning in the company in its early days.

Never Lose the Common Touch
The big man of Indian IT kept his personal life simple. He lives in a simple, middle class house and flies economy till date. Murthy has always been accessible to people around him.

Do Good, Look Good
Murthy knew the importance of creating an image for Infosys. He invested in creating a sprawling, world class campuses early on, bigger than any other company's headquarters in the country, that would make his global customers feel like they were in a global office.

Nice Story

A professor began his class by holding up a glass with some water in it. He held it up for all to see & asked the students
"How much do you think this glass weighs?"

'50gms!' ..... '100gms!' .....'125gms' ...the students answered.

"I really don't know unless I weigh it," said the professor, "but, my question is:

What would happen if I held it up like this for a few minutes?"

'Nothing' …..the students said.

'Ok what would happen if I held it up like this for an hour?' the professor asked.

'Your arm would begin to ache' said one of the student

"You're right, now what would happen if I held it for a day?"

"Your arm could go numb, you might have severe muscle stress & paralysis & have to go to hospital for sure!"
….. ventured another student & all the students laughed

"Very good.

But during all this, did the weight of the glass change?"
asked the professor.

'No'…. Was the answer.

"Then what caused the arm ache & the muscle stress?"

The students were puzzled.

"What should I do now to come out of pain?" asked professor again.

"Put the glass down!" said one of the students

"Exactly!" said the professor.

Life's problems are something like this.
Hold it for a few minutes in your head & they seem OK.

Think of them for a long time & they begin to ache.
Hold it even longer & they begin to paralyze you. You will not be able to do anything.

It's important to think of the challenges or problems in your life,
But EVEN MORE IMPORTANT is to 'PUT THEM DOWN' at the end of every day before You go to sleep..

That way, you are not stressed, you wake up every day fresh &strong & can handle any issue, any challenge that comes your way!


So, when you leave office today,
Remember my friends to 'PUT THE GLASS DOWN TODAY! '

Address by Subroto Bagchi, COO, MindTree Consulting

Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting to the Class of 2006 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore on defining success. July 2nd 2004

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep � so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government � he reiterated to us that it was not his jeep but the governments jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep � we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance � a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Fathers office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix dada whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed � I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, Raju Uncle � very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as my driver. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant � you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mothers chulha � an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesmans muffosil edition � delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it. That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios � we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios � alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my fathers transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited. That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper � end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the Universitys water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mothers eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed. Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my lifesown journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my lifes calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places � I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him � he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, Why have you not gone home yet? Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts � the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, thememetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servants world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world. Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity � was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world.

something really nice

I received following story in email. Nice way to start day :)

There were about 70 scientists working on a very hectic project. All of them were really frustrated due to the pressure of work and the demands of their boss but everyone was loyal to him and did not think of quitting the job.

One day, one scientist came to his boss and told him -

Sir, I have promised to my children that I will take them to the exhibition going on in our township. So I want to leave the office at 5:30 pm.

His boss replied

“OK, You ‘ re permitted to leave the office early today”

The Scientist started working. He continued his work after lunch. As usual he got involved to such an extent that he looked at his watch when he felt he was close to completion. The time was 8.30 PM.

Suddenly he remembered of the promise he had given to his children. He looked for his boss, He was not there. Having told him in the morning itself, he closed everything and left for home. Deep within himself, he was feeling guilty for having disappointed his children.

He reached home. Children were not there. His wife alone was sitting in the hall and reading magazines.

The situation was explosive; any talk would boomerang on him.

His wife asked him “Would you like to have coffee or shall I straight away serve dinner if you are hungry.

The man replied “If you would like to have coffee, I too will have but what about Children??”

Wife replied “You don't know?? Your manager came here at 5.15 PM and has taken the children to the exhibition”

What had really happened was …

The boss who granted him permission was observing him working seriously at 5.00 PM. He thought to himself, this person will not leave the work, but if he has promised his children they should enjoy the visit to exhibition. So he took the lead in taking them to exhibition. The boss does not have to do it every time. But once it is done, loyalty is established.

That is why all the scientists at Thumba continued to work under their boss even though the stress was tremendous.

By the way, can you guess as to who the boss was..?

He was none other than

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former-President of India

Tips for Better Life

Nice Read: http://pravstalk.com/tips-for-better-life/

Poster kinda thoughts and most of the things are not that difficult to follow.

Discipline and doing the right things is the heart of the message.

Managing Career & Expectations: Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan's, Tata Sons talk at IIM

Again blog reader Dyer shared article/presentation titled: “Managing Career & Expectations”

This article is regarding: “Managing Career & Expectations” (Talk at one of the IIMs) by Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director - Tata Sons.

You can download from here.

In case you like to read in text format, you can read below.

Here is how it starts: There is a Thai saying that experience is a comb which Nature gives to man after he is bald. As I grow bald, I would like to share my comb with you.

1. Seek out grassroots level experience

I studied Physics and Engineering at University. A few months before graduation, I appeared for an HLL interview for Computer Traineeship. When asked whether I would consider Marketing instead of Computers, I responded negatively: an engineer to visit grocery shops to sell Dalda or Lifebuoy? Gosh, no way. After I joined the Company and a couple of comfortable weeks in the swanky Head Office, I was given a train ticket to go to Nasik. Would I please meet Mr. Kelkar to whom I would be attached for the next two months? He would teach me to work as a salesman in his territory, which included staying in Kopargaon and Pimpalgaon among other small towns. I was most upset. In a town called Ozhar, I was moving around from shop to shop with a bullock cart full of products and a salesman's folder in my hand. Imagine my embarrassment when an IIT friend appeared in front of me in Ozhar, believe it or not! And exclaimed, "Gopal, I thought you joined as a Management Trainee in Computers". I could have died a thousand deaths. After this leveling experience, I was less embarrassed to work as a Dispatch Clerk in the Company Depot and an Invoice Clerk in the Accounts Department. Several years later, I realised the value of such grassroots level experience. It is fantastic. I would advise young people to seek out nail-dirtying, collar-soiling, shoe-wearing tasks. That is how you learn about organizations, about the true nature of work, and the dignity of the many, many tasks that go into building great enterprises.

2. Deserve before you desire

At one stage, I was appointed as the Brand Manager for Lifebuoy and Pears soap, the company's most popular-priced and most premium soaps. And what was a Brand Manager? "A mini-businessman, responsible for the production, sales and profits of the brand, accountable for its long-term growth, etc., etc. I had read those statements, I believed them and here I was, at 27,"in charge of everything". But very soon, I found I could not move a pin without checking with my seniors. One evening, after turning the Facit machine handle through various calculations, I sat in front of the Marketing Director. I expressed my frustration and gently asked whether I could not be given total charge. He smiled benignly and said, "The perception and reality are both right. You will get total charge when you know more about the brand than anyone else in this company about its formulation, the raw materials, the production costs, the consumer's perception, the distribution and so on. How long do you think that it will take?" "Maybe, ten years", I replied, "and I don't expect to be the Lifebuoy and Pears Brand Manager for so long"! And then suddenly, the lesson was clear. I was desiring total control, long before I deserved it. This happens to us all the time - in terms of responsibilities, in terms of postings and promotions, it happens all the time that there is a gap between our perception of what we deserve and the reality of what we get. It helps to deserve before we desire.

3. Play to win but win with fairness

Life is competitive and of course, you play to win. But think about the balance. Will you do anything, to win? Perhaps not. Think deeply about how and where you draw the line. Each person draws it differently, and in doing so, it helps to think about values. Winning without values provides dubious fulfillment. The leaders who have contributed the most are the ones with a set of universal values! V Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King for example. Napoleon inspired a ragged, mutinous and half-starved army to fight and seize power. This brought him name and fame for twenty years. But all the while, he was driven forward by a selfish and evil ambition, and
not in pursuit of a great ideal. He finally fell because of his selfish ambition. I am fond of referring to the Pierre de Coubertin Fair Play Trophy. It was instituted in 1964 by the founder of the modern Olympic Games and here are two examples of winners. A Hungarian tennis player who pleaded with the umpire to give his opponent some more time to recover from a cramp. A British kayak team who were trailing the Danish kayak team. They then stopped to help the Danish team whose boat was stuck. The Danes went on to beat the British by one second in a three hour event! What wonderful examples of sportsmanship! Play to Win, but with Fairness.

4. Enjoy whatever you do

Sir Thomas Lipton is credited with the statement, "There is no greater fun than hard work". You usually excel in fields, which you truly enjoy. Ask any person what it is that interferes with his enjoyment of existence. He will say, "The struggle for life". What he probably means is the struggle for success. Unless a person has learnt what to do with success after getting it, the very achievement of it must lead him to unhappiness. Aristotle wrote, "Humans seek happiness as an end in itself, not as a means to something else". But if you think about it, we should not work for happiness. We should work as happy people. In organizational life, people get busy doing something to be happy. The more you try to be happy, the more unhappy you can get. Your work and career is all about you’re reaching your full potential. Working at one's full potential, whether it is the office boy or the Chairman, leads to enjoyment and fulfillment. A last point about enjoyment. Keep a sense of humor about yourself. Too many people are in danger of taking themselves far too seriously. As General Joe Stilwell is reported to have said, "Keep smiling. The higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see of his backside".

5. Be Passionate about your health

Of course, as you get older, you would have a slight paunch, graying of hair or loss of it and so on. But it is in the first 5 - 7 years after the working career begins that the greatest neglect of youthful health occurs. Sportsmen stop playing sports, non drinkers drink alcohol, light smokers smoke more, active people sit on chairs, and starving inmates of hostels eat rich food in good hotels and so on. These are the years to watch. Do not, I repeat do not, convince yourself that you are too busy, or that you do not have access to facilities, or worst of all, that you do this to relieve the stresses of a professional career. A professional career is indeed very stressful. There is only one person who can help you to cope with the tension, avoid the doctor's scalpel, and to feel good each morning - and that is yourself. God has given us as good a health as He has, a bit like a credit balance in the bank. Grow it, maintain it, but do not allow its value destruction. The penalty is very high in later years.

6. Direction is more important than distance

Every golfer tries to drive the ball to a very long distance. In the process, all sorts of mistakes occur because the game involves the masterly co-ordination of several movements simultaneously. The golf coach always advises that direction is more important than distance. So it is with life. Despite one's best attempts, there will be ups and downs. It is relationships and friendships that enable a person to navigate the choppy waters that the ship of life will encounter. When I was young, there was a memorable film by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart and Dona Reed, and
named IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. It is about a man who is about to commit suicide because he thinks he is a failure. An angel is sent to rescue him. The bottom line of the film is that "No Man is a Failure Who Has Friends".

Conclusion:

My generation will never be twenty again, but when you are older, you can and should be different from my generation. Ours is a great and wonderful country, and realizing her true potential in the global arena depends ever so much on the quality and persistence of our young people. Good luck in your journey, my young friends, and God be with you.

Thank you very much Dyer for you wonderful contribution on this blog.

Safety in Using Computers ... and remain HEALTHY

Blog reader Dyer shared nice presentation pointing towards "Safety in Using Computers ... and remain HEALTHY"

In his own words: We are too much addicted with computer usage, be careful to protect your health specially your back, neck and hands.

Thank you very much Dyer for sharing such a nice pictorial presentation.

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email from Mr. Narayan Murthy

I came across this nice email which is sent to all Infosys staff by none other than Mr. Narayan Murty. (Click here to know more about him)

 

Mail sent by Mr. Narayan Murthy to all Infosys staff: 

It's half past 8 in the office but the lights are still on...   
PCs still running, coffee machines still buzzing...   
And who's at work? Most of them ??? Take a closer look...   

All or most specimens are ??   
Something male species of the human race...   

Look closer... again all or most of them are bachelors...   

And why are they sitting late? Working hard? No way!!!   
Any guesses???   
Let's ask one of them...   
Here's what he says... "What's there 2 do after going home...Here we get to surf, AC, phone, food, coffee that is why I am working late...Importantly no bossssssss!!!!!!!!!!!"   

This is the scene in most research centers and software companies and other off-shore offices.   

Bachelors "Time-passing" during late hours in the office just bcoz they say they've nothing else to do...   
Now what r the consequences...   

"Working" (for the record only) late hours soon becomes part of the institute or company culture.   

With bosses more than eager to provide support to those "working" late in the form of taxi vouchers, food vouchers and of course good feedback, (oh, he's a hard worker... goes home only to change..!!).   
They aren't helping things too...   

To hell with bosses who don't understand the difference between "sitting" late and "working" late!!!   

Very soon, the boss start expecting all employees to put in extra working hours.   

So, My dear Bachelors let me tell you, life changes when u get married and start having a family... office is no longer a priority, family is.. and   
That's when the problem starts... b'coz u start having commitments at home too.   

For your boss, the earlier "hardworking" guy suddenly seems to become a "early leaver" even if u leave an hour after regular time... after doing the same amount of work.   

People leaving on time after doing their tasks for the day are labelled as work-shirkers...   

Girls who thankfully always (its changing nowadays.. though) leave on time are labelled as "not up to it". All the while, the bachelors pat their own backs and carry on "working" not realizing that they r spoiling the work culture at their own place and never realize that they would have to regret at one point of time.   

So what's the moral of the story?? 
* Very clear, LEAVE ON TIME!!!   
* Never put in extra time " unless really needed "   
* Don't stay back unnecessarily and spoil your company work culture which will in turn cause inconvenience to you and your colleagues. 

There are hundred other things to do in the evening..   

Learn music...   

Learn a foreign language...   

Try a sport... TT, cricket.........   

Importantly,get a girl friend or boy friend, take him/her around town...   

* And for heaven's sake, net cafe rates have dropped to an all-time low (plus, no fire-walls) and try cooking for a change.   

Take a tip from the Smirnoff ad: *"Life's calling, where are you??"*   

Please pass on this message to all those colleagues and please do it before leaving time,   
don't stay back till midnight to forward this!!!   

IT'S A TYPICAL INDIAN MENTALITY THAT WORKING FOR LONG HOURS MEANS VERY HARD WORKING & 100% COMMITMENT ETC.   

PEOPLE WHO REGULARLY SIT LATE IN THE OFFICE DON'T KNOW TO MANAGE THEIR TIME. SIMPLE ! 

Regards,   
NARAYAN MURTHY.

 

=============

Note: I don’t know authenticity of this email. So, if you know that this is fake, please let me know so that I can remove it, this is because I have lot of respect for Mr. Narayan Murty and I don’t want to be wrong here.

 

My Previous Posts:

o        My Lessons in Life by Azim Premji

o        Good Karma

o        Advice

o        Difference between GREATness and Mediocrity

o        I have Learned That ...

o        Learnings from Steve Jobs

My Lessons in Life by Azim Premji

I came across very nice newspaper cutting.

Check this out ... it's really worth reading.

Learnings from Steve Jobs

This article is from: http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/jan/22slide2-how-steve-jobs-can-help-you-succeed.htm

 

Ø       Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Ø       Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Ø       A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.

Ø       Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Ø       Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Ø       Nobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.

Ø       Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.

Ø       Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

Ø       It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too. That's what we get paid to do. We just want to make great products.

Ø       I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Ø       I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year... It's very character-building.

Ø       The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.

Ø       I was lucky -- I found what I love to do early in life.

Ø       Recruiting is hard. It's just finding the needles in the haystack. You can't know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it's ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they're challenged? I ask everybody that: 'Why are you here?' The answers themselves are not what you're looking for. It's the meta-data.

Ø       People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

Ø       You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.

Ø       I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Ø       It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them -- not something they'd want now.

Ø       To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline.

Ø       We are very careful about what features we add because we can't take them away.

Ø       Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Ø       Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?

Ø       I think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we're always trying to do better.

Ø       I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do.

Ø       When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is -- are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They'll want to do what's best for Apple, not what's best for them, what's best for Steve, or anybody else.

Ø       There's a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner's mind.' It's wonderful to have a beginner's mind.

Ø       Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated.

Ø       (We want to) get new products out there and have new ways to buy them. I think if we manage the top line, the bottom line will follow. I don't know what the future will bring, but we're working as fast as we can.

Ø       We've had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place -- the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.

Ø       Our DNA is as a consumer company -- for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply.

Ø       ...Almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Ø       It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led and how much you get it.

Ø       In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

Ø       So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'

Ø       You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.

Ø       We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.

Ø       It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

Ø       The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.

Ø       I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it.

Ø       We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

Ø       Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.

Ø       We do not say anything about future products. We work on them in secret, then we announce them.

Ø       You know, we don't grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved... I mean, we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.

Ø       Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

Ø       If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.

Ø       I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over 10 million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money.

Ø       I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

Ø       My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

Ø       I mean, some people say, 'Oh, God, if (Jobs) got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.' And, you know, I think it wouldn't be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that's what I try to do.

Ø       The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

 

 

Readers are welcome to share their comments in comment section below.

 

Source Courtesy: www.rediff.com