Ten things u'll never hear a consultant say

• You're right; we're billing way too much for this.

• Bet you I can go a week without saying "synergy" or "value-added".

• How about paying us based on the success of the project?

• This whole strategy is based on a Harvard business case I read.

• Actually, the only difference is that we charge more than they do.

• I don't know enough to speak intelligently about that.

• Implementation? I only care about writing long reports.

• I can't take the credit. It was in your marketing department.

• The problem is, you have too much work for too few people.

• Everything looks okay to me. You really don't need me.

Marriage - a homily

A lover came to his girl friend’s house and knocked at the door. She asked from inside, “Who is that?” He said, “Honey, it is I.” She said, “There is no place here for you and me.” He again said, “Dear, it is I, open the door.” But, she said the same, “There is no place here for you and me; please go away.” Though he insisted, she repeated the same words and did not open the door. The man went away sad and depressed. He lost all his happiness and felt lonely. Her words always haunted him: “There is no place here for you and me.” Slowly, he began to think about these words and went into deep reflection. Then, he understood what she really meant. He became enthusiastic and returned to her house and knocked at the door. She asked from within, “Who are you?” He said, “It's you.” The door was opened, and they became one. What she was telling was that there was no place here for “you” and “me”, i.e., “if you feel that you are separate from me, go away.”

Success of married life is in unity, experience of togetherness. There should not be “you and me” between husband and wife. Marriage is the partnership of whole of life. Marriage becomes a failure when husbands and wives think and talk and act like “you and me.” When husband and wife stop saying “this is my house,” “this is my car,” this is my money,” etc., marriage life becomes successful and meaningful.

Today you are born together to that new life, and you shall be together forevermore. Marriage is a call to oneness of two persons. You were born in different family backgrounds; you grew up in different life situations; you may have different temperaments, behavioral patterns or different opinions over many things. Still, you can be together and grow into one reality, accepting each other with all the differences. As Kahlil Gibran puts it, the strings of a lute are different, but they quiver with the same music; the pillars of the temple stand apart, but they together hold the temple. You have to start finding out, one by one, what you appreciate in the other rather than what you dislike in the other. Then you grow into oneness and enjoy the married life.

Marriage is not just a contract. It is a sacrament; a covenant with God. Your spouse is not just your choice. He or she is a gift from God for your growth into the fullness of your life. Many people in America have asked me about the marriage customs in India. Whenever I explained the arranged marriage system in India, and the fact that the bride and groom do not know each other very well before the marriage, I was always confronted by a question, “Are those marriages valid?” My answer was sometimes teasing the western custom of courtship marriages. I would say, “There in America you first fall in love, live together for many years and know each other, then get married, and then easily get divorced, and complain at the church court that marriage is invalid. Whereas, in India bride and groom do not know each other very well before marriage; they first marry, then fall in love and accept each other and stay together. There the spouse is not your choice, but a gift from God.

Your spouse is a gift of God. Treasure it. Treasure each other; accept each other; forgive each other; comfort each other; encourage each other; enjoy each other; and, grow together forevermore.

At the same time, let there be spaces in your togetherness. Kahlil Gibran, in his famous book, The Prophet, says “let the winds of the heavens dance between you; love one another, but, make not a bond of love.” No one should become the slave of the other. No one should grow in the shadow of the other. No one should become the master of the other. There should be freedom of love, not bondage of love. There should not be any controlling of one by the other. You cannot possess love or buy love. You can give love, and only by giving love, can you experience the joy of love.
Marriage is a life of love, not of bond. It is a life of giving and not of possessing. Marriage is not filled with pleasure; it is mixed with pain--pain of caring for each other--pain of love, because love is not pleasure; it is pain--pain of giving.

Do not be foolish to believe that your life from now on would be a pleasant all the time. Be ready to accept the turmoils and sufferings of life. They have a redemptive value. William Barcley, the famous Bible scholar, chants a poem:

“I walked a mile with pleasure
And she chattered all the way
But left me alone the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with sorrow
Never a word said she
But, Oh!, the things I learned from her
When sorrow walked with me.”

In order to have a happy married life, I would recommend Gibran’s advice. I shall quote the lines from his book, The Prophet:

“Let these be your desires--
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And, then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

Are leaders born or managers trained?

Are leaders made or born ? Are managers born or made ? Do you become a better leader or manager with time ?
Harvard Business School’s Abraham Zaleznik articulated the difference in his classic 1977 essay “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” Proclaimed Professor Zaleznik, “Managers and leaders are two very different types of people. Managers’ goals arise out of necessities rather than desires; they excel at defusing conflicts between individuals or departments, placating all sides while ensuring that an organization’s day-to-day business gets done. Leaders, on the other hand, adopt personal, active attitudes toward goals. They look for the opportunities and rewards that lie around the corner, inspiring subordinates and firing up the creative process with their own energy. Their relationships with employees and coworkers are intense, and their working environment is often chaotic.” Leadership is the value added; management is what gets automated, rightsized, or outsourced to Bangalore or Guangzhou.
Global markets provided an unambiguously clear opinion: They craved leadership. The Lord John Brownes, Jack Welches, Percy Barneviks, Carlos Ghosns, Andy Groves, and Bill Gateses are celebrated far more as innovative global leaders than as operational management exemplars. The leadership “brand” has become so powerful and compelling that successful managers are inherently considered “great leaders.” Ironically, however, people tagged as great leaders don’t have to be great business managers. Over the past two decades, managing a large corporation has changed beyond recognition. CEO supermen like Andy Grove of Intel and Jack Welch of GE are in short and unpredictable supply from a far too limited pool.
Yet the bursting of the dot-com/telecom bubbles and the disgraceful collapses of Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco, Parmalat, etc., have cruelly constrained the brand trajectory of the leadership label. Where governance was once the longest and most elastic of leashes that let leadership stray with minimal attention, it is now a beautifully upholstered cage with 24-hour surveillance and legal advisors on call worldwide.
In other words, the global rise of governance as a business concern reflects the pathological failure of leaders to manage. Accountability, transparency, and oversight will mean something very different to CEOs and the boardroom over the next 10 years than they did in the past. A new ecology of interdependent management, leadership, and governance is arising. Striking a balance among these three imperatives will be a greater challenge in years to come. Will those who meet that challenge emerge with better leadership, better management, and better governance? Today’s “leaders” have lost the right to be the only ones with the authority and legitimacy to answer those questions.
According to Charan the essential qualities of a successful business leader are the ability to sort out complexity because of the nature and number of variables and the structural changes in business. The second is managing external constituencies. And the third is you must be a social architect. You have to have those three. And of course, there’s a fourth: tenaciously mastering the business model.
And finally attitude described by a lovely Indian phrase in describing an affliction suffered by successful leaders: “divine discontent.” best explained as “Never satisfied. You’ll never reach that inner, ultimate nirvana.”