Reflections on Relationships

As I sat down to meditate in the dimly lit room, I looked at the Linga Bhairavi picture. Her large eyes looked straight at me and were fiery...somewhat frightening...as though she was angry. Over the years, I have come to realize that whenever I smiled at her, she was smiling back. When I was sad, it appeared that she was sad too. When I was angry, it appeared that she was angry too. Whatever type of energy I gave out, I seemed to get back from her. She was reflecting my mood!!!

Likewise, in every aspect of life. What you give is what you get. If you sow happiness, peace, calm, truth, respect, love, you get back all of these and you get them back in abundance. If you sow anger, jealousy, hatred, lies, violence, you get back all of these and, I believe, in good measure too. So, you have to choose what you want. People call this Karma - the Universal Law of Cause and Effect - As you sow, so shall you reap.

I came across this story which is from Associated Press and reported by Kurt Westervelt. I must thank my good friend, Anoop Bakhtani, for forwarding this story to me.

On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "A person, who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide." That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus.

When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B". When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, if the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger.

The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus. Now comes the exquisite twist.

Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window.

The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

There are so many such stories. Bring this to the corporate world and you see the same everywhere. The people you meet on your way up are the same you meet on your way down. It is those relationships that you build that matters. It helps build trust and confidence in the long run at an individual level.

It has been over 3 years that I have moved out of active corporate life. It took me over a year to settle down to do what I wanted. However, I was not fully occupied. So, I decided to keep myself busy. As I was wondering what I should do, I felt that my key strengths were Leadership and Innovation. So, I decided to focus on Leadership Workshops initially and then, few months later, took up Workshops on Design Thinking. As I went about marketing my services, it was wonderful to see all my old friends come forward to help. They trusted that I would do a decent job and gave me assignments. Clearly, the time I had taken to build relationships was working for me now. As a dear friend put it, "It is Brand Ravi working for you now. Before long, the brand of the work that you do in this new avatar will take over."

When I look back, I believe that it is good Karma. As I close this post, I think of what Buddha says, "Be kind to all creatures. That is true religion."

The VUCA World - Who Cares

So much is talked of our world - that it is filled with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Every time, one or more of the VUCA elements set in, there are opportunities waiting to be exploited.  So, I am not sure what worries us? In fact, we should be happy. This world is throwing so many opportunities at us and we are not using them.

All of us settle in to a comfort zone and just don't like to be disturbed. Any change that is likely (even remotely) to get us out of this comfort zone becomes a massive change and we struggle to accept this change. I am sure many of us who have lived in different cities and/or countries will vouch that each time we shifted, it was a huge task. Once we moved mentally, the physical move was a breeze. Many of us struggle to make this mental move and so, everything else becomes difficult. How many times have we searched for jobs in the city that we live in? We may not like the organization that we work for but we don't move till we get a better role/job in the same city - hopefully, closer home!!! And guess what, we have reasons for this - family, children's schooling (as though other places in the world don't have schools), and the like - I am sure you get the drift.

Recently, I talked to a Leadership group on the VUCA world. To me a VUCA world is a bundle of opportunities that we should welcome with both arms open rather than fear. This comes with years of conditioning that "change" is good. Look at the disruption happening around in this world. As the old order gives way to the new, some companies who still embrace the "old" are struggling while those who are riding the "new" wave are enjoying this change. One of the leaders commented that a lot of these changes are far away from India and would take few years to come. So, he still had time to sweat the assets that he had in the "old" wave. Whilst he was partially correct, I asked him as to what he is doing to re-skill his large organization as they will not be in a position to handle the new requirements. He responded that his teams have identified the "good" ones and are spending on their training and also investing on them to bring in the new wave. However, he planned to let go many others as they were unwilling to embrace the change. I asked him if it was easier to just re-train his staff rather than hire new ones because they were used to the culture of his organization, they were with him for years, etc. His response was that it was easier to buy out the skill sets by hiring instead of spending money on re-training those who just didn't want to get re-trained.

This is the crux of most of the VUCA issues. We don't want to move out of our comfort zones to re-skill ourselves. Over my career spanning 35 years, I have re-skilled myself over 10 times - once every 3 years!!! And, I expect this to become once every 2 years as technology becomes all pervasive. What made it easy for me to re-skill continuously? It was the ability to manage myself, read the needs of the market, prepare myself for change and actually change. 

So, it all starts with you!!! If you are ready to change, the VUCA world will actually mean nothing. All this talk of VUCA Leadership, etc all starts and ends with the individual. Manage yourself and you will manage the ever changing world around you. VUCA would then read as Velocity (or Vision), Unorthodoxy (or Understanding), Co-Creation (or Collaboration or Clarity) and Abundance (or Agility)....you will be in a position to decide how the acronym should read!!!