Viva la Espana

The biggest spectacle of the year is over and what an event it was ! The world cup promised Surprise and it dint let down.

The world cup started slowly with the Jabulani looking more like Jackie shroff not ready to move at all , But as the tournament progressed it was the referee who looked like the scapegoats with glaring errors. Some suggested "karma of 1966" during the England - Germany game. But due credits to the winners Spain who proved that playing Good quality and attractive style can actually win you games. But what i more loved about the Spaniards were the way they lined up and how they clicked as a team outsmarting other tacticians.

The important aspect they had is the backbone of the Squad plays the club football together thus the understanding was very high and the Defence was rock solid which allowed them eke out 1-0 wins in all of their knock out matches and then the skill of the players they had a squad which had multi talented players who could play in various positions and change them which fooled the opposition's strategies and this is what any organization needs to beat competition the joker who can help you perform well.

The crucial part is that they did not over rely on any part i.e. unlike others either going out all attacking or going out too defensive they had the skill to handle any situations and finally they had match winners, Its often said you win a game by playing to your strengths and when you have people who can work under extreme conditions and delver the best can you ask for more and that is what this team had in abundance creating a winning mark. They may not have looked the best every time they took to the field but they made it counted when it mattered



Cheers !!

Arvind !!

Softer competencies

Competency Mapping based recruitment was the summer project of one my Good buddies and this is the area where i have to thank Web2.0 for giving a chance to interact with fellow students who share similar interests. He was talking about developing a system in which based on the skill set of current employees and by taking the Job description requirements he was creating a Mapping system for talents which could be recruited soon.

The idea seemed and fantastic and really well and it was implemented for a manufacturing plant at the workmen level proving an immense success but suddenly when it was taken over by an FMCG company to replicate the similar model it failed causing him to wonder what went wrong and during the analysis we found the following things

1) The higher your pay and rank the work is more planning than execution and people are different when it comes down to planning.

2) Values are inbuilt within us and comes down to our basics thus the value system of one individual cannot be replicated and thus becomes irreplaceable.

3) With organizations looking at efficiency Multi skilled Multi lingual people are the need of the hour and they are not easily available and if they become available they are sure to burn a hole in your pocket

4) It ultimately also plans to work out on how is the relationship with the immediate superior and subordinate and that may not be replicated

With these thoughts in Mind i was wondering how could we create a model with which we can work and am still waiting for that answer

Cheers

Arvind !!

True India

The best part about a train journey is when you meet new people and have a conversation with them on wide ranging topics. This time i made blunder which helped me in finding a voice to interact with during the onwards journey. We were all tired when we boarded the train from Mumbai it was 2 in the morning and were vaguely sleeping on some seats when some one woke me up at 5.30 and claimed it as their seat. I was half dazed and trying to find what happened and sooner i realized my mistake and started a conversation with him on various issues ranging from SIFE topics and what we can do to the society and agriculture and so on and so forth when he mentioned one point which was something we have rarely observed.

When we go in a train travelling for 24 or 30 hours we observe that only signs of modernization and growth seems to be for about 5-6 kms surrounding a station other than that there is only barren land or agricultural land. Only during 10% of the trip you see modernization and urbanization orelse it is all rural and still agriculture contributes so low to our economy in comparison so all the people who wants agri to flourish at the expense of industries should suggest ways and ideas in which it can be improved if not let us industrialize we have abundant resources which are being wasted by infighting amongst ourselves.

For all my life i have been travelling long distances in train and i suddenly was able to relate to him and what he was saying. A country like Israel which has Desert soil is able to export foods after having surplus and barely has lands we have so much resources invested and we wait for transgenic foods? Time agri experts golden words are listened


Cheers !!

Arvind

SIFE Story

Last week was the most fulfilling week in my journey as a student of Madras School Of Social work When i was a part of the team which reached the National Semifinals of SIFE.

A brief Introduction about SIFE : SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) is an international network of students, academics and business leaders.
Working in partnership with business and higher education, SIFE "mobilizes university students around the world to use the knowledge gained in the classroom to address real world business and economic issues in their communities. SIFE students form teams on their university campuses and perform community service projects that teach market economics, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, personal success skills, business ethics, and environmental sustainability."

The team was selected in Nov.2009 and it was an honor to be a part of the team considering the Mark set by our predecessors who were national finalists and along with the other core team of Hadeeja, Madhumitha Sowndararajan, Prashanthi, Adline Sophia, Sowmya Mathews, Harish, RakeshKumar Patil, Tanvir Ahmed we identified and tried to find out various communities with which we could work in creating our projects and after a month of searching we narrowed down to two communities

*Tsunami Affected women community near Thiruvanmiyur

*Tsunami affected Women community who were involved in Making of office stationery made out of recycled paper

Personally the icing on the cake was the fact that the second community was identified by me thanks to my association with the Theosophical Society which through its sister body the Theosophical order Of Service helped in setting up the recycling plant

In essence we worked with totally about 55 women affecting the lives of about 165 people. The experience was full of rich memories like Boating Trips and Travel and also the testing times of trying to find a community and working with them.

We were selected as Winners of the regional Competition and we finished just short of National Finals which was our aim leaving us disappointed. But in the end when we question ourselves on the fact whether this was worth burning our weekends and free days ? the answer would be an Emphatic "YES" the experience of setting up a business model for them has surely revived the entrepreneurial spirit in me and coupled with the chances in the wings the dream is not far away !! Thanks SIFE !!

Cheers

Arvind !!

The Waterfall

For the first time in my life i was happy with politicians of my state because they announced holidays for 3 days which coupled with the weekend suddenly reminded us of 2009 which was full of extended weekends which allowed us to attend the wedding of our classmate and then we went to this tourist place called Suruli waterfalls and it was in this waterfalls where the first scenes of Raavan were shot ! My god it was breathtaking place. The climb up to the top of the hill scared me as it was a pure forest and it was steeping at about 80 degrees straight up. But we settled for a falls lower which was not at all crowded and was covered with boulders and the river water flowing. nothing but picturesque and we moved around till the source to enjoy it. The best part was travelling up and it was exhilarating because were we thought we would spend an hour being there we spent close to four hours and many of them on empty stomach. When we were crossing a lot of people influenced my thoughts and ideas which i could relate to HR and Visualize it, Some of them are


(i) When in trouble wait for help - When mostly we are in trouble we refuse to ask for help believing they may not help or they would rather ask more questions and compound the problems but the issue will be that when we itself have no ideas there is nothing wrong in waiting for help to arrive. This was an incident where i was caught confused between taking two paths and ultimately decided for others to come who already gone through it once and then i went via that path which could actually help me get out of that sticky situation.

(ii) Rush but don't hurry: We often realize that when the time is short we rush up things randomly but we ultimately do it in a bad way which would require further sweeping up from us. Most of the times we do not realize that there is more time than we think, if we sequentially follow an order of doing we would very well end up doing the work.

(iii) Do not attract distractions : in a forest its crucial to be silent and be focused on your goals unnecessary attention will create trouble which happened when Monkeys invaded our area and we were scrambling for place with them fearing them.

(iv) Showboating is necessary : It may not be wrong to showboat and take pictures when you have enjoyed something fully and the picture is worth cherishing for but a picture at every instant and every place might make you happy but could put off others similarly its best to celebrate an achievement and not any incident but do celebrate.


A lot more great things but mostly on which i have already written

Cheers

Arvind Srikantan

Extending HR

"Recently i had a strange encounter in the offices of one of India's leading ITES organization which baffled me. In the waiting lounge while reading the paper i noticed a north Indian woman barely about 25 or 26 with a toddler and she looked poised and focussed waiting for someone. When the HR executives of the organization came to meet her there was an obvious sense of fear when they were walking towards her and later listening to their dialogue i was able to configure out that her husband was working for the organization and was absconding she was not willing to move and was creating a scene which was making a huge blemish they were explaining that he was in another city and even made her converse with him through mobile but she was not buying any of it and stood firm demanding him to come to office or asking for his new address"


Well when these kind of awkward situations arise in an office its tough to ignore them and stop rumors. And here is where am wondering are fresh graduates trained to handle this kind of a crisis situation ? A hysterically possessed woman threatening and there is pile of work lying inside to be completed like recruitments to be done, shortlisting candidates is left, calls to business partners to be made, forms pending, mails stacking up.

And you have someone who is not ready to listen to you what do we do and am intrigued by the fact i could be in the position of HR folks in a year, The time has come with work from home and other ideas where the line between office and home is vanishing in Thin air which could leave people gasping for breath if they are not trained to handle these kind of scenarios.

Stressed out employees are a huge factor which could affect the organization many people believe if an employee is ready to work overtime or holidays it might be that he is committed to their work which could be very true but also there is a high chance that he is using office as a solace to escape from home where the situations are not good and thus it is essential to identify the stressed ones out and it is good if people are not workaholics then they are done with all the jobs and at the end they might be ready to move on.

Tiger Conservation

When the whole campaign of 1411 tigers and save the tigers was started i was very cynical towards it and I had blogged about it that there was nothing which i could do.

But thanks to my association with the Vasantha Youth Lodge of Theosophical society i had the privilege of watching a special screening of "Truth about Tigers" a movie by Shekar Dattatri the eminent wild life photographer which focussed on how important it is to conserve the tigers.

The essence of it we have to understand is that the Tigers have existed on Earth even before Humans came, if we believe the Evolutionary theory and its a shame that our national animal needs to depend on our intervention for its survival.

The fact remains that when we are bloating of being an emerging economic superpower it will be a huge vacuum if we become cynical and throw our hands saying we are hopeless in saving our national animal. The tiger has been pushed from the free roaming forests all out India to just 1% land and even here we humans still fight for space with the tigers which for a fact can live in any sort of forests. The current forest coverage is low but research experts its still enough for close 10,000 tigers to survive in the wild.

The truth which should astound environmental conservatives is that a healthy tiger population is a clear indication of a healthy vegetation this is because the tiger is the apex hunter and thus when there is healthy tiger population it shows that there are good herbivores and thus a good vegetation which will help in fighting global warming. With illegal demand of tiger products to China never seems to decrease every part of it is wanted including the Whiskers which are used for tooth ache.

The reality is that Tigers die when they do not have proper food, a tiger needs approximately a prey per week and thus for every 5o deers that are hunted we lose a tiger as it starves without food. We have celebrities going on dear hunting escapades and mostly even the courts let off people saying its only a dear and charges them a meager amount of fine but this compounds and has put this grave situation. We can replicate a good system which was used in the Bhadra forests of Karnataka where the government offered 1 million Indian rupees to any family which is ready to move out of the forest and thus the tiger count in that forest has remained steady unlike the famed forests of Sariska, Panna and Ranthambore where we have lost the tigers because of

(i) Faulty methods to count them
(ii) Poorly trained rangers
(iii) Denying gtruths given by experts
(iv) The greed of the poachers

The major activity which we as common people could do is press the issue a call to all lawyers please if you can take up cases of NGO's and fight as the ratio of poachers caught to sentenced for crimes is less than 5 % thanks to lack of good legal support. An urge to use recycled paper which will save forests and finally let us stop living in Ignorance that government will do anything we need another revival like project tiger or else we could better start looking for a new national animal


And please visit this link if you are interested about tiger conservation and feel something should be done for the national animal

"The Truth About Tigers"
Cheers

Arvind !!