The love, wishes, and blessings we share with our loved ones after New Year mass, parties or at home, as we move into 2025 are always special and energising. In addition, we are bombarded with various New Year messages on social media. One rare but valuable wish is related to a New Purpose for the New Year.
As I reflected on this, the question that came up was, is it a new purpose or a renewed purpose? If the concept of ‘purpose’ is perceived synonymously with ‘goals’ or if the reference is to the purpose for the year, then it could be considered a new purpose. However, if we look at ‘purpose’ as a life-purpose, a reason for being, we look at it as a renewed purpose.
One of the swans living in the River Ivel – Biggleswade (that flows by my home), keeping me company during my solitude of writing my thesis – Photo credit mine.
Let me at the outset wish you a New Year filled with purposefulness, positive energy, and prosperity.
You might have wondered why I was SILENT in 2023. My last blog post was on the 1st of January 2023. I was silent from the public with almost no activities on social media as I was purposefully engaged.
My purpose statement got adjusted almost monthly during 2023 and the first paragraph of the latest revision done this morning (1 January 2024) reads as; To live purposefully based on my evolving realities and sense of purposefulness, actively offer my learnings to others and be available to those who reach out for guidance.Please reach out if you would like to read the rest of my purpose statement and if you want to discuss your life purpose.
A picture taken today on our new renovated balcony of a gift of a plant given by my daughter Natasha, son-in-law Pulasthi and grand-daughter Sathyana for Christmas 2019. This signifies growth, letting go of non-value adding activities (cut branches) and renewal purposefully.
This is a question we need to ask ourselves?
We Live in a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous that no one can tell us what’s in store for 2023. We have been asking this question every year and we could not find the answers out there. It was even more profound in the past three years of the pandemic and the global economic crisis.
The response to this dilemma from my experience is to reflect using some guiding questions. I found this approach so useful that I could say that I had one of the best years of my life in 2022.
Without boring you with what I achieved I would like to say that I attempted to live a purposeful life. A life of service to my world. When making crucial decisions, I asked myself what would be the course of action that is best aligned with my purpose. What action would I be most proud taking. Please search with the key word ‘purpose’ in this blog to explore ideas about living purposefully.
Which 3 words do you see first? What do those three words tell about you? Does this help you to understand who you are and or your big ‘why’ or something else. Let’s share and explore.
This my quest to help us understand purposefulness. Please respond to each other’s comments and questions and come up with new questions. I hope this enriches our lives.
I have been attempting to understand the notion of purposefulness over the past 25 years. I plan to pose a question every day to help us go deeper. Please respond to each other’s comments and questions and come up with new questions. I hope this enriches our lives.
Being a CEO of an organisation is the dream of many. A great first step is to be the CEO of your own life. Ranjan De Silva shares how to be purposeful and use your unlimited potential within you, to take control of your life and guide it to growth and prosperity, as a CEO of an organisation would.
In this powerful keynote at the Dhaka University, Business Faculty, Skill Hunt event – Road to CEO, Ranjan shares simple steps to success and happiness through purposeful living. See the poems ‘Plea of a graceful women’ and ‘Determination of an extraordinary man’ at the conclusion of the talk.
The following process can help you get good value from this video:
Step 1 – A moderator (an expert from your company) to open the session, explaining the importance of the session.
Thank you Tanzi for writing this masterpiece. I feel it will touch the hearts of the even the most selfish and the most misguided. This a blog post that needs to be read by all
I wish you a Merry Christmas. In this season of Love, let’s give our love and kindness to all living beings with the intention of adding value to the process of life.
As I write this blog post, the first instalment of phase 3 of this series, on Christmas day, I feel it is appropriate to explore how we find purpose at Christmas. We explored the notion of purpose from various viewpoints in the first phase (ten blog posts) and then we attempted to understand the process of purposeful living in the second phase (eleven blog posts) of this series. We now step in to the third phase of purposeful living that deals with practical aspects of living a purposeful life.
While a lot of effort goes in to dressing up for Christmas, in terms of our homes, our clothes, our social media pages and our websites, it would be appropriate to find out the purpose, reason or intention behind this dressing up? I believe purposeful living is being joyous, learning from our struggles, living with noble values and being of service to our world. Continue reading “Finding Purpose at Christmas – Purpose of Living – Part 22”→
We explored the notion of purpose from the viewpoints of Abrahamic Religions, Eastern Philosophies, Early Sciences, Modern Sciences, Philosophy, Psychology & Ecology in the last few blog posts in this series. Let’s now have a look at this notion from an ‘Action Logics (pre-conventional)’ viewpoint.
Let’s first try to understand the notion of ‘Action Logics’. It tries to explain the ‘logic’ behind the ‘action’ we take. Most action is based on decisions unless it is spontaneous. If decisions are well thought out and rational, they could be based on an intention, reason or purpose. This shows that actions can be based on a reason or purpose.
Therefore, the logic behind decisions we make that determine actions we take, could have an impact on the quality of the decision and the resultant action. The notion of action logics[1] has some potential in understanding this phenomenon.
The developers of the ‘Action Logics’ model proposes two broad categories of Action Logics: pre-conventional and post conventional. According to a research study in the USA of 4300 plus adults, it was found that 85% belong to the pre-conventional group. While it is difficult to define pre-conventional, to me it seems like those who are more materialistic, achievement oriented, less mature, younger and competitive would fall in to this group. Let me try to make sense of the four pre-conventional ‘Action-Logics’ in relation to purposeful living. Continue reading “Purpose of Living – Part 9: The Action Logics (pre-conventional) Viewpoint”→
2016 is almost over and I hope you made good progress during the year. Some of us would say it was an awesome year, some would say it was an average year and some others would say it was not a good year! The best we can do is to use the learning from 2016 so that we can make 2017 a better one.
I am pleased to present a simple four-step process to help you prepare for a fruitful 2017.
Step 1: Let’s start by doing this simple reflective exercise to take the resources from 2016 for a better 2017. Answer the following question in writing or in an artful form such as a picture, poem, collage, structure etc.
What were my biggest successes in 2016? What did I learn from it?
What were my biggest failures in 2016? What did I learn from it?
Who am I grateful for 2016? (Those who helped me and was tough on me)
This is such an important perspective for reconciliation written by my daughter Natasha who is conducting research in this area. There is a lot of misunderstandings due to brainwashing and personal experiences. However at a personal level there is a different dynamic. It is these one on one conversations that makes people realize the truth and the value of each other. It helps us celebrate the diversity and re-discover our unity. I know the office of national unity, headed by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has worked and is working towards creating such conversations. Lets hope this process is accelerated so that we can experience reconciliation and achieve real healing!
Been on my fieldwork in Sri Lanka has inspired me to write a blog post about why I’m so interested in pursuing the topic of transitional justice and reconciliation for my PhD research project. In academia we seldom get to talk about our personal views, so this defining moment for me always gets stored at the back of my mind where the cobwebs live. But, so many people I met on a professional level have asked me, why? why reconciliation?
When I first moved to London, in 2012, and started my new job, a colleague, a young Sri Lankan Tamil gentleman (H) approached me and we started getting to know each other, moving on to the ‘where are you from originally’, we were both stunned to realise that we have something else in common; Sri Lanka. But there was also something else that could have stopped our friendship from growing…
It is fascinating how we continue to look for the right answer. Perhaps it is because of schooling systems which expects us to know the ‘right answer’ in order to pass examinations. Perhaps it is because of interviews panels that expect us to know the right answers in order to qualify for a job. Perhaps it is because of management who expects us to make the right decisions to business problems.
But what is a ‘Right Answer’? Who decides its right? By what standards do we decide it is right? Who sets these standards? People come from different backgrounds, education, experiences, cultures, mind-sets etc. The variables are almost infinite. Therefore we are all unique and we see, hear, feel, smell and taste things differently. Furthermore each situation is different. Each situation is a collection of places, time of the year, people, infrastructure, concepts, brands, climate, culture etc. Again the variables are infinite.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here's an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,100 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
In my blog post on the 7th of May 2014 titled ‘How great is your team?’, I promised to go into details of the 11 different aspects that makes a great team. The first aspect regarding ‘Burning Platforms’ was detailed in my blog post on the 30th of June and here is the second installment; is your team Ali GED around critical goals?
This is one of the key reasons for team performance below potential identified by me in many of my team leadership consulting assignments.
During a consultation for a global company in the manufacturing industry, senior leaders were asked to list down their critical goals. While there was one which was common in everyone’s list, it was fascinating to see the differences in the rest of the items.
You must have guessed right, the common item was profit targets and the list that varied included quality, sales, technological advancement, cost reduction, attrition, team work, brand image etc. What was also interesting was that the HR head had attrition in her list while the CFO had cost reduction in his list; they turned out to be more their own functions
Goals.
During the rest of the day I facilitated the team to conduct radical conversation around the various goals and we ended up the day with a few simple but powerful goals all team members were aligned with.
During the session I cited the metaphor of ‘will this make the boat go faster’ to underline the fact that; If our goals are clear we know what we should do and should not do. When the British rowing team was preparing for the Olympics and had to make a decision they asked the question, ‘will this make the board go faster?’ This helped them to turned down dinner invitations and they even decided not to attend the opening ceremony. The net result they improved their speed by a few seconds and ended up winning the gold.
The phrase; ‘will this make the boat go faster’ became an interesting anchor during the discussions of the day and is been still used in meetings and planning session.
The quest for better leadership is still on and will continue to go on forever. One of the reasons for this is the ever-changing mindsets, expectations, challenges and demands presented by the ever-changing world around us.
There are many tools being used to create better Team Leadership and the next few blogs from me will analyse different tools and methodologies available to create better team leadership.
Let’s first see what is ‘Team Leadership’. Is it the same as or different to ‘Leadership’? Leadership can be used in many situations and ‘Team Leadership’ is an art of leading a team as against leading an individual or a set of individuals.
Team leadership has the following challenges that require the responses indicated.
1. Objectives of the team – The larger, more complex and the more challenging the objectives of the team, the type of ‘Team leadership’ differs. It will require skills such as making the team see the big possibilities, making the team believe in their collective ability to achieve the objectives, and it requires aligning the team under a common plan to achieve the objectives.
2. Size of the team – The larger the team is, the less time the team leader has to provide for each team member, the larger the team is, the more complex will be the relationship issues, the larger the team is, the more effort it will take to keep the team motivated. Appointing a few deputy leaders who take over responsibilities for smaller teams within the team and having more team interactions than individual interactions can overcome this.
3. Diversity of the team: The more diverse the team is, more the differences of opinions will be, more the potential conflicts will be and this will require more involvement of the team leader. Proactively helping team members understand each other through team building exercises and radical conversations, selecting the right mix of team members for various projects and investing more time on participative planning and briefing will help overcome this challenge.
4. Resources available (or not available): The resources available or not available for the team in relation to the tasks at hand can pose a challenge to the leader. The leader should use Continuous Improvement techniques such as Kaizen to get the team working together to make the most of existing resources.
5. Conflicts in the team – A team leader will lead different levels of conflicts in the team. Therefore it is important for the leader to be a good listener, mediator and counsellor using techniques from mainstream psychology, transactional analysis and Neuro Linguistic Programming to prevent, defuse or resolve such conflicts.
Leadership is about developing team members to carryout the important responsibilities in the organization. This is essential if we are to grow and take on higher-level responsibilities. Developing team members requires time. Therefore leadership is inefficient in the short run. However it is a great investment of our time and energy to reap near medium term to long-term results, as having a developed team will help produce more value and great results.
Given below are 10 common areas where this inefficiency can happen.
Getting the right team member in to the team: We need to first ensure the team member with the right attitude and skills are recruited into the team. This requires spending time on determining the profile of the ideal team member, preparing the right evaluation techniques and spending quality time evaluate the candidates.
Taking time to direct: When a new team member is recruited or transferred in from another area of the organization to our team it takes time to induct and teach. Time needs to be allocated to introduce the new team member to the other team members, work environment, mission, vision, values, customers, products and work processes.
Listening: It is important to actively listen to the team member to understand his/her level of absorption, development, enthusiasm, motivation and concerns. This will enable us to ensure the new team member feels at home soon, ready to take on responsibilities that we are planning to delegate.
Handing over responsibility: It requires us handing over a task that may have taken us 1 hour to complete and it takes our team members double that time as he/she consciously and carefully does the job as requires. We need to have patience knowing that there is a natural curve of gaining efficiency as the skill and confidence improves.
Detailed briefing: It is important to provide a detailed briefing for the responsibilities to be delegated. It requires determining how much of authority needs to be delegated. It requires documenting the details, some of which is in our mind and we do as second nature. Sometimes we neglect to provide the finer points thinking it is common sense. Sometimes what are common senses for us is not so common for others.
Checking work done: We need to also invest time to check the progress of work and the quality of work. This requires reading weekly updates, walking into the areas of operation, speaking to those on the job, discussing variances and brainstorming solutions.
Praising: We need to lavishly praise good work. We need to praise the progress in the process, not only wait for the outcome. While this can take time, it is an important activity to reinforce good behaviour.
Improvement feedback: We need to also give improvement feedback for areas that needs to be better. Instant feedback can be detrimental as it can go packaged with negative emotions such as anger. Therefore it is better to give it some time to cool down, visualize how best to most productively provide the feedback and do so, so that this becomes an effective development activity. The cooling down periods takes time.
Dealing with demotivation of others: Delegating responsibility to one person can demotivate another team member. Therefore it takes time to keep others informed, engaged in other value adding activity and communicate consistently so that we keep the entire team motivated.
Dealing with conflict: It is quite likely for conflict to arise between team members as they work on projects and various tasks as they discharge responsibilities delegated. Therefore it is the leaders responsibility to defuse and manage the conflict to create strong team bonding. This of course takes a lot of time and the energy.
Reporting up: The leader is ultimately responsible for tasks delegated and the reporting responsibility lies with the leader. When we were doing the tasks ourselves it was easy to report in detail as we were at the thick of everything. However when it is delegated we need time to get all the details, ask questions to get clarifications and write the report.
With the celebrations of winning the world T20 2014 Cricket title still riding high and the entire nation positively charged, it would be a good time to reflect on the leadership lessons.
Lesson 1: Never give up: After having won the cricket 50 over world cup in 1996, Sri Lankan cricket has had ups and downs. Ups, mostly because of the cricket infrastructure in the country producing brilliant talent and downs mainly attributed to cricketing politics and administration. Sri Lanka has come to the finals of many a world level tournaments and ended up runner-up. This time around too, many were having fears of another loss in a final, but things went Sri Lanka’s way, not by accident but by design. Therefore leaders keep learning from mistakes, growing with challenges until they reach the target.
Lesson 2: Team work : While Sri Lanka became the world T20 Cricket champs no Sri Lankan player featured in the top 5 run scorers or wicket takers in the tournament. This is due to all players contributing their very best when conditions required them. Therefore a player like Kumar Sangakkara who failed to score much during all the games during the run up to the final, showed up and became the match winner at the final. A player like Rangana Herath who bowled Sri Lanka to victory in the crucial match against New Zealand was not very suitable for the conditions in some other matches. The player of the tournament was from India, the runner-up. Therefore there are no individual winners, but the team wins. Continue reading “Big Leadership Lessons from Little Sri Lanka”→
After having returned to my apartment in Dhaka Bangladesh after being away for over 2 weeks, I happened to open my shoes closet and found some of my shoes I had left in the closet in a deteriorated state. I then realized I had not used those shoes over about 6 months and a line that I use in my workshops; ‘use it or lose it’ came to my mind.
There is an on-going battle between positive energy and negative energy all the time. From a humanistic philosophy point of view, EVIL is LIVE spelt back words. Evil is anti-Life. Evil is negative energy and life is positive energy. The universe is in constant decline due to Evil forces or negative energy. This process is known as Entropy, which is the opposite of Evolution. Evolution requires a higher power that provides positive energy.
The purpose of life is to grow physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Physical well-being requires positive energy in the form of right nutrition, exercises and rest. The absence of these will result in the decline of physical well-being.
Mental well-being requires positive energy in the form of good attitudes, creative ideas, new value adding learning, development of skills etc. The absence of these will result in the decline of mental well-being.
It is great to have Valentines Day, the same way we have mother’s day, father’s day etc. While many commercial enterprises have used these days to make money, it at least reminds us to express our love to our loved ones, at least once a year.
But why celebrate such important days once a year? Why not every day? Why not make every day Valentines day, Mother day, fathers day and perhaps a few new important days such as reach out to enemy’s day, make up with fallen out friends day, get in touch with old friends day etc.
While Valentines Day is about celebrating love by giving surprises such as gifts & visits and special dinners & cruises it is will be great not only to ‘give’ but also to ‘forgive’. After all, love is for giving and that’s why we should be forgiving.
Forgiving is tough if we hold on to the past hurt and pain. Sometimes it is our ego that won’t allow us to forgive. Holding on to the bitterness only creates negative energy in us as we carry those negative feelings in us. Accepting that we are all human, we are not perfect and we all make mistakes helps us in the forgiving process.
Forgiving helps us to repair relationships and therefore it is beneficial to fostering quality relationships, or closure so that we can rejuvenate relationships or move on with confidence.
When the almighty god always forgives us, why not we take a cue and follow suit.
With the Mayan Calendar reaching the end of its current cycle, 2012 was eventful with the economic downturn continuing and there were many efforts in many countries around the world to get out of it. Then there were the various natural and human made disasters such as the various storms, earthquakes, wars and killings that added more burdens on the leaders grappling with the economic crisis. Political leaders had new challenges to deal with, dividing their attention between the economy and the new challenges. There were elections in many countries such as the USA, Russia, France, Spain, Egypt and it is hoped that the new leadership will have new vision and a new mindset to solve the challenges faced by the world.
Then there were the celebrations with the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen, The London Olympics, the re-election of Obama, the launch of path breaking communication technology [Quad Core] for smart phones and tablets such as the iPhone 5, iPad 4th Generation, iPad mini, Samsung Galaxy note and Windows 8. And of course the first video on You Tube to reach a billion hits; Gangnam Style!
