Traveling from Bangalore to Lucknow, I had enough time in transit at Delhi and in the flights to read the first 25 tips of highly acclaimed ‘Guru’ of management Tom Peters. These were the first in the series of 100 to be published on his blog http://www.tompeters.com .
Now what the ‘Guru’ suggests
Be Tidy
Talk We instead of I
Say thank you all the time
Call the people who matter, use lunch hour to meet people
Be enthusiastic
Use hot words like ‘Wow’, ‘Great’, ‘Excellent’ all the time
Give the bad news ASAP
Be prepared
Management by wandering – go around and talk to people
Make conscious effort to create first impression
Treat every day as most important day of your life
Read self help / motivational books
Have a dream
Take feedback from customers
Communicate effectively
Have a mission statement
And a few more messages that were written like scribbles, I could not decipher or understand them.
Now a few questions that came to my mind while reading these:
How are all these lessons different from all the self help books that we see around us?
If I prepare myself for every breath I take, every word I utter, every step I take, my whole life goes in preparing myself for what I think others should perceive me as, when do I live as myself?
Do we need rules for everything? Why can’t we just let the things flow by us and enjoy them as they flow, no matter which direction the flow is in?
Well, you have penned something similar to the feelings I had about these kinds of books. I had read a similar one by Seth Godin recently: 26 virtues to be successful or something like that. The anecdotes he gave to explain were quite interesting, but if you view it from a really practical mind, it did not really amount to anything, because it makes sense written down beautifully, for that piece of stuff, otherwise it may not. If one elaborates on honesty as a virtue, how long can one take it? Moreoever, the question of following these for making things better in our lives or become more succesful in our lives.. why should there be any norm for the life that you have with you, provided you live it within the boundaries that you have set, which are acceptable by the society (society is just an institution to look upon at a macro level, basically, it should meet your right way of living)? So no point in that either.
ReplyDeleteThese books provides with the framework for the qualities of a winning behavior - if, for example, he comments that "Be enthusiastic in your attitude", it is just a statement for the one who is not initiated to the reality, to make a stepping. How one should spend living one's life can never be dictated by these, just take them at their face value for what they are worth; from what I have learnt reading few of these kinds of books, it does not really matter who the author is, it amounts to almost the same things.
But truly, Anu, I never realized the true effects of wording what you get from reading a book, only sometimes, it takes the charm out..
- Param
Well, you have penned something similar to the feelings I had about these kinds of books. I had read a similar one by Seth Godin recently: 26 virtues to be successful or something like that. The anecdotes he gave to explain were quite interesting, but if you view it from a really practical mind, it did not really amount to anything, because it makes sense written down beautifully, for that piece of stuff, otherwise it may not. If one elaborates on honesty as a virtue, how long can one take it? Moreoever, the question of following these for making things better in our lives or become more succesful in our lives.. why should there be any norm for the life that you have with you, provided you live it within the boundaries that you have set, which are acceptable by the society (society is just an institution to look upon at a macro level, basically, it should meet your right way of living)? So no point in that either.
ReplyDeleteThese books provides with the framework for the qualities of a winning behavior - if, for example, he comments that "Be enthusiastic in your attitude", it is just a statement for the one who is not initiated to the reality, to make a stepping. How one should spend living one's life can never be dictated by these, just take them at their face value for what they are worth; from what I have learnt reading few of these kinds of books, it does not really matter who the author is, it amounts to almost the same things.
But truly, Anu, I never realized the true effects of wording what you get from reading a book, only sometimes, it takes the charm out..
- Param
Hi Param,
ReplyDeleteI believe lot of academicians lack a practitioner's view pointg and vice versa...and that is why we get very different views of the same thing. Acadmia derives everything from other's experiences and from parameters that are measurable and practitioner's go by their own experiences, which may be limited and may have a lot of gut and intuition involved in that.
-Anu