Everyone constantly faces challenges – at home with our spouse, children or other family members; at work with your peers and bosses. Sometimes life itself seems a challenge because it throws up so many relationship-based and situational challenges. But the biggest challenge of them all is one’s mind. Often, it is possible to control everything else but one’s mind. Being master of the mind is no less than mastery of the world. Chapter 6 of Bhagavad Gita says, “Our mind is our best friend and our worst enemy. If we know how to manage our mind, we can manage our time, our...

Who is a good leader? What is it that makes a good leader stand out in the crowd and mesmerize you with his/her finesse in everything he/she does? Experts say that along with numerous other qualities, it is the quality of feeling empathy towards your employee and colleagues that actually makes one a successful leader and eventually leads to the success of any organization. You can find people in leadership roles almost everywhere you look. However, simply shouldering responsibilities of a leader doesn’t necessarily makea a person an effective leader. Leadership itself is a privilege and...

Am I really good? Have you ever asked this question to yourself? Basically, a good human being is one who wouldn’t harm others and if possible, would go out of the way to help someone. Is that good enough? Or, does one need to apply more stringent, rigid standards? In a book called “The Difficulty of Being Good” – By Gurcharan Das. He has examined the Mahabharata through an analysis of the one predominant characteristics – good or bad – of each of the epic’s characters. What is heartening is that all good characters in the epic seem confused too, at some...

The following three strategies are simple, and they are also extremely powerful. However, they require consistent and skillful application in order for your personal strategic plan to become reality. These are the exact same changes that an individual must make in order to create personal change, that a company must make in order to create a lasting competitive advantage, and that a community must make in order to best serve its citizens. Step One—Raise Your Standards Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. Simply put, you MUST expect...

A common adage in the management consulting business is that efficiency and effectiveness are completely different measurements. An organization can be extremely efficient, getting high productivity from their workforce and producing their product or service with very little waste or churn, yet be totally ineffective in meeting their objectives if, for instance, their product or service is not accepted in the marketplace. This difference is often distilled to the statement “efficiency is about doing things right, while effectiveness is about doing the right things.” The Seven S approach is...