Tag: Omar Khan

Why try to be a Banana, when you are a Peach?

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Business, Communications, Knowing, Leadership, learning, Personal Excellence, Relationships, SpiritualLeave a comment
peaches-bananas
Image Credits: http://www.keywordhut.com

I could be the most delectable, the most delicious, the most wondrous peach in the world, and I could offer it to everybody.  But there are people who are allergic to peaches.  Then they may want me to be a banana.”  And so often we become a banana for other people who want peaches.  What a messy fruit salad.  Isn’t it all right to say to them, “I am so sorry I cannot be a banana? I would love to be a banana if I could for you, but I’m a peach.”  And you know what?  If you wait long enough, you’ll find a peach lover.  And then you can live your life as a peach, and you don’t have to live your life as a banana. All the lost energy it takes to be a banana, when you’re a peach!

This is a part of a poem I love, written by the author of ‘Love’ Leo Buscaglia. It had an amazing impact on my life and the choices I make. This has helped me to continue to search for my God-given gift by asking the questions; what do I love to do? What am I good at? What is important to me? These reflections have led me to find a sense of my ‘purpose’ and I continue to ask myself questions to inquire if that is my purpose. Such inquiry has also changed the questions and I ask and the third question above has now changed to; for what or who am I in service of?

Continue reading “Why try to be a Banana, when you are a Peach?” →

Great Communications Syncronises ‘Intent’ and ‘Impact’ and this Requires ‘Heart & Soul’

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Communications, Conference learnings, Leadership, RelationshipsLeave a comment

Compare the intent of your communication with the impact of your communication. If there is mismatch then surely there is conflict. Great communicators know how to synchronize the two and this requires us putting our heart and soul into communications. This was a powerful message delivered by at the learning event : ‘Heart & Soul of Real Communications’ on the 21st of January 2014.

So how do we start achieving this magical balance?

This requires us to be a students of impact of our own communication on other people and our intent of that communication. We need to use our ears to listen to the emotional impact created on the other person. We need to be empathetic. We need to see it from our soul, that is to know the positive energy it creates in the other person. Understanding of spiritual intelligence is key here.

Continue reading “Great Communications Syncronises ‘Intent’ and ‘Impact’ and this Requires ‘Heart & Soul’” →

Great Teams Build Great Organisations and Great Organisations Build Great Teams!

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Conference learnings, Leadership, Relationships, TeamsLeave a comment

Top Performance requires us to ensure that top teams are set up, developed, nurtured and rewarded appropriately. Most companies miss this important point. Here is a summary of the insights from the ‘Top Performance through Top Teams’ session held on the 21st of January 2014.

Inappropriate strategy deployed by the organisations to measure/improve business performance is one of the key reasons that teams remain average teams delivering average performance.

  1. They focus too much on individuals
  2. They focus too much on how to work than how it works (excessively process driven)
  3. They create and run ‘Vertical Organisations’ – Hierarchies are created to fix responsibilities, which in turn dilute the authority resulting in indecisiveness / delays/non fulfilment of commitments made to all stakeholders
  4. When an organisation faces a problem, if they have mediocre team members, they will strongly believe in maintaining/defending status-quo.
  5. The biggest untracked cost of such companies is commitments made and not followed up.

Therefore following are the appropriate strategy for the organisations to measure/improve business performance.

Continue reading “Great Teams Build Great Organisations and Great Organisations Build Great Teams!” →

Hardware or the Software … in so many aspects of life?

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Leadership, Personal Excellence, Team Excellence1 Comment

Recently I stumbled upon a TedX video of David Damberger titled: What happens when an NGO admits failure. It is a real eye opener for NGO’s who spends money in providing infrastructure such as tube wells. What they forget to do is investing some money on maintaining such infrastructure by employing people, training them and providing a source of funding and following up. David talks about how he saw this happening and making the same mistake himself. He sees how the tube wells provided were unusable a few years later due to this issue.

A success story in this aspect is the foundation for goodness run by Kushil Gunasekara in southern Sri Lanka. A village names ‘Seenigama’ he was fostering got completely wiped out due to the Tsunami on the 26th of December 2004. He got the support of various donors, well-wishers and those who were affected and re-built the village. He made it sustainable through various activities such as running 2 BPO’s and other industries and the village is a thriving one now. They have produced 6 national players for Sri Lanka in various sports among other achievements. It is a fascinating story and you can see their details at http://www.unconditionalcompassion.org/indexc.php.

Continue reading “Hardware or the Software … in so many aspects of life?” →

Celebrating the life of the father of a genius!

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Leadership, Personal Excellence, Relationships, Spiritual2 Comments

I was saddened to see an email from my business partner, friend, brother and coach, this morning about the loss of his father. I feel for this loss personally as I love and respect him and I knew his father had a special influence in making him the genius he is.

Unfortunately he could not be by his side before his death or attend the funeral as there was not enough time for him and his wife to get back on time for the funeral as the Islamic traditions require burial within 24 hours.

I can imagine the pain his mum was going through after losing her sister a few days ago and now her husband. It may also be tough for her not having her son by her side. I can also imagine what he may be going through, not been able to bid good bye to his father and not been able to be there.

Continue reading “Celebrating the life of the father of a genius!” →