In the long run

While in the long run we are all dead, the near future requires us to do a lot.
Yesterday I did a SWOT analysis,and discovered the following:-

S-Lots, W-some, O-lots of them with the Indian eco on the northwards journey. T-health, natural disasters

Other Plus pionts:-

1. I was better off compared to my colleagues.
2. I’m happy
3. My family life is swell.
4. Well placed to take on the world
5. Enough cushion
6. Good networking

However a rejoinder lest we forget (I read this the other day on a friend’s Blog) :-

Every morning the Deer wakes up and knows that it has to run faster than the fastest deer,or else it'll be killed by the Lion.

Every morning the Lion wakes up and knows that it has to run faster than the slowest deer,or it'll have to starve.

At the end of the day,it doesnt matter if you are the Deer or the Lion;When the Sun's up,you'd better get running!"

On Life and Death

Life here is very uncertain for the locals out here in troubled African States. War, Hunger, Strife etc., have taken a heavy toll. They believe in living one moment at a time (and not one day at a time mind you). Surfing through the net saw a 1994 Pulitzer prize winning entry and subsequent suicide of the photographer Kevin Carter:

http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/odds_and_oddities/ultimate_in_unfair.htm

http://homepage.eircom.net/~manics/MSPedia/Carter.htm

His suicide note read:

"I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen... The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."

Really! I really wonder if the child is still alive? This is one of those situations that just makes you think. My heart goes out for that girl. I wish that Kevin Carter had not resorted to such an extreme step. He could have done more for humanity being alive than by commiting suicide. However I just can't imagine having to deal with what he saw in sudan in 1994 so I think I must not comment on his decision to end his life. But ending one’s own life this way some how seems like a precious life wasted away….
I pray that he had a comfortable passing.

On Networking

Networking at UN

How many people would I be able to know in a year(which I am going to spend at UN)?

Based on my past experience, I will know about 100+ as acquaintance (I would be acquainted with and did recognize them by their face value), 30-40 as friends and 15-20 as good friends who I can network with for future.

So let’s now do some quick calculations and recheck

On an average we meet 30-40 new people every day in the mission area. Of these 15 are locals who you will never see again. Of the rest 25, 10 international staff will not meet yo again. Of the 15 left another 10 will not remember you when you meet them next. So the take away is 5 new people who will continue to remember you and acknowledge your existence when you meet them in future. 5X365= 1825. of these 1825 even if 1% become more than your acquaintances about 20 sound friends in one harsh year should be quite ok.

Even if I know atleast these 20 gals/guys well by the end of the year , I would consider it as a success. Networking is important and its a important support system for whole of our lives...
Hope that I really get to know each and everyone out here...........

The Road Ahead

After UN Life will never be the same again

What I want from my one year @ UN
- New perspectives on life- Better organisation and management capabilities
- Ability to handle complex data for decision-making
- Be among top ten percentile in this world in terms of quality of life
- A few good friends
- Last but not least, personal and professional growth

What I don’t want to lose
- Ability to make intuition based decisions
- Lateral thinking
- Ability to be as comfortable with an office boy as much as the ability to befriend senior people
- My old friends and contacts
- My appetite for risk taking (of last I’ve seen people become risk averse)
- My commitment for my long-term personal goals (balance of physical, mental, social and spiritual aspects of life)

Where and how far I will go in life will now depend solely on the road I choose to take in the near furureCome tomorrow and my life will never be the same again.

Take-aways from the United Nations Deputation towards my ongoing education in life

1. Fantastic understanding of the way international organizations function
2. Habit of prioritizing work and life
3. Loss of previously held KSAs-both good and bad
4. Allergy to noise, traffic and modern civilization
5. A few friendships & a lot of acquaintances the world over
6. Reading habit
7. Addiction to western food courtesy UN Rations
8. Either a habit of accosting or sickness to greet people
9.Improved ability to work with divergent work groups
10. A better understanding of human nature11. Diversity
12. International Exposure
13. Better job opportunity
14. Habit of sitting late into the night on the comp
15. Tag of Phoren return
16. Accelerated greying of hair or baldness due to stress
17. A foot in the door to opportunities in the UN
18. Openness to change
19. Sports20. Loss of extreme individuality / Urge to belong to a group
21. Meticulousness
22. Operational missions(flying experience)
23. A suitcase full of good show certificates
24. More respect for your spouse and love for the kids
25. Suitable direction for future
26. Time to complete my Doctorate

My Take on Leadership

Musings on Leadership

There are some issues I thought I should address the qualities that I think are necessary in order to be a good leader.

The first and most important is courage. If you don't have courage, you are never going to be a good leader, whatever your other qualifications are. The courage must extend down as well as up. Courage should not be mislabeled loyalty. Although loyalty is a requirement, courage is even more of a requirement.

Second, you must be totally honest. Your integrity must be beyond question at any time of the day or night.

Third, you have to have the ability to see beyond tomorrow. I have met so people who couldn't see anything but what they were looking for tomorrow.

Fourth, we hear a lot about motivation. It's a buzz word. Motivation I think is in final analysis isn’t just one’s ability to get others to do as you wish them to do. What is important is to must change their attitude before you motivate. It's attitude that's the key; then motivation will follow. If you get the attitude right, and the problems will take care of themselves because the people are motivated.

Fifth, never lose control of yourself(Emotional stability); never raise your voice; never let the situation control you. Even though it appears to be out of hand, you must always be doing something to change the situation if you don't like it. You must never resign yourself to “Chalta hai” attitude or “that is the system and that's how it works.” That attitude of resignation will defeat you and defeat your people. You must always be attempting to influence the situation.

Next, you must at least have a working knowledge of what your people are doing. You are not expected to be an expert welder or an expert aircraft technician or an expert cook, but you have got to know something about all those jobs so that you can discuss them intelligently. You have to discuss them on a personal basis: "What are you doing? Tell me what you are doing and how you are doing it." Let that individual speak to you. You have got to let him know you are interested in what he is doing. You have got to let him know you know a little bit about it but you want to know more because you are interested in it and it is contributing to the mission. And if possible, learn something about him. If you have worked with a group of people for six months and you don't know something personal about each individual, you are no leader, and you are no commander. It has to be a sincere interest.

Finally, and the most obvious, you must do what you preach. If you preach honesty and morality and good conduct and whatever else you preach, such as getting the job done to the best of your ability and getting it done right the first time, that's the way you must live, because if you don't you won't get what you want from your subordinates. You have to be the shining example, and you must never fail. It is easy to be a leader and a commander from seven in the morning until five o'clock in the evening. From five in the afternoon until seven in the morning is when it is tough to be a commander. That's when you have to get out of bed and go get somebody out of jail. That's when the crises come up and you have to function like you have just had 24 hours of sleep and you are perfectly rested and perfectly in control of the situation. You have got to be a leader and a commander 24X7.

I say this because I have tried to use these guidelines for being a leader. In the process I gained some and I lost some. But in the overall analysis I ain’t done too badly either. While this might basically be military oriented way of functioning, it holds good for all spheres of life. The bottom line is gaining the trust and of the people you command and earning respect 360 degrees.

The African Safari!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Found this one on th WWW. brief but insight full.

Make Your life worth living

A boy was drowning in a river and he shouted for help.A man passing by jumped in the river and saved the boy's life.As the man was leaving the boy said "Thank you".The man asked "For what".The boy replied "For saving my life".The man looked into the boy's eyes and said "Son,make sure when you grow up that your life was worth saving" !

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My First hand Experiences in AFRICA (DR Congo)

The Roads Were Lovely - and Left Behind...

Sometimes, when you stop and take stock, you find that you have changed into someone else. I have changed. Or more precisely, I have accepted that part of me that was always there. May be it is being in Africa, having to unlearn a lot of things before re-learning from a scratch. May be it is what I hear or what I see. Or just the realization that I can plan to drop out from my persent race despite being in the top slot. But with each passing day I find that things which seemed to be very important till recently have now become so trivial and inconsequent.

I never realised what poverty was, till I saw young grils selling their bodies for a pack of biscuits. I did not realise what hunger was till I saw people eating human flesh. I never realised what greed was till I saw Legal governments arming people to kill people, just to meet their energy , financial and other needs. I did not realise that human race could survive for so long inspite of the adversity till I saw the perseverance of the human soul in this continent.

Not dificult to realise why slavery existed out here till recently. People are ready to work for 16-18 hrs a day if you could give them one meal. Value of human life here is so low down here that cattle out here is worth 10 times the value of a human life(or maybe more).

The toll the war, hunger and diseaese has taken in this country has crossed 10 million and still counting with 1,000 people dying every day. While all this is going on out here there is a component of Indian contingent making its humble contribution in trying to bring peace to this part of the strife torn continent. No SEA(sexual exploitation and abuse) cases against the local population, no involvement in local politics and no bias against any warring side, does make its contribution that much more credible.

It is sad to see the state of this country despite being endowed with natural resources and good weather but then we to have a similar situation back home --in Bihar.

"Kept cribbing about my torn shoes till I saw a man without feet" sums up my feeling tonight.

Well a senti blog entry, but have been thinking about this aspect in the recent past and couldn't help putting it down in writing.

An interesting news article for those of you who might be interested:

DRC: the UN’s most challenging peace-keeping mission
by RN Security and Defence editor Hans de Vreij, 16 June 2005(Read it on http://www.monuc.org)
Major-General Patrick Cammaert (photo: MONUC)

This week, an Indian soldier serving with the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) died after having been hit by a stray bullet. The incident happened during a gunfight with local militiamen in the eastern part of Congo, near the border with Rwanda. Earlier this month, a Nepalese peacekeeper met the same fate when gunmen opened fire on a human rights investigation team elsewhere in the region. The soldiers’ deaths illustrate the dangers that peacekeepers face in the former Zaire. In the DRC, in fact, the UN is now engaged in one of the largest and most challenging peace missions ever.

Inter-ethnic violenceAccording to a UN spokesman, about a million people have died in the eastern DRC in the past few years alone, the result of inter-ethnic violence and the activities of a myriad of militias. Although the UN mission (know by its French abbreviation MONUC) has been in place in the DRC since 1999, things have changed dramatically in the past months. MONUC is now aggressively taking on the militias, after being given a robust mandate by the UN Security Council and sufficient troops to do the job.

The Royal Netherlands Marine Corps’ Major-General Patrick Cammaert is UN commander for the volatile region. He is probably one of the UN’s most experienced field commanders, having served in Cambodia, Bosnia and as commander of the UN mission in the borderland between Ethiopia and Eritrea. He is also well-versed in complicated UN politics, having served in the New York headquarters as chief military advisor to Kofi Annan until earlier this year.

We can’t do everythingGeneral Cammaert explained to Radio Netherlands that the 15,000 troops under his command in Eastern Congo may sound impressive in terms of numbers, but is in fact small, given the size of the area involved.

“My area of responsibility in Eastern Congo covers the Ituri province, North- and South Kivu and Katanga. That’s roughly an area the size of Texas plus two times France. The Security Council has given us a certain amount of troops; that means we can only carry out a certain amount of tasks. We certainly cannot do everything.”

On the new, unusually ‘assertive’ approach of this peacekeeping mission, General Cammaert said:

“In order to keep the peace, we have to enforce it sometimes. We have the mandate to do so; we have the rules of engagement to do so. We are allowed to use all necessary means to implement the mandate. We try to be as restrictive as possible in the use of force. However, when we are challenged, in order to protect the local population under imminent threat, we have to act. Then we act with the robust weaponry that we have available.”

Women and children.The militias that MONUC is confronting include women and children. General Cammaert:

Fierce clashes have taken place in recent months; almost every day, MONUC’s units are actively protecting the local population and taking on members of militias that have refused to lay down weapons. The days when UN peacekeepers had to watch passively as atrocities occurred around them - simply because the UN Security Council did not allow them to intervene – now seem gone.

“When people are firing at you, you don’t ask ‘how old are you’. People of a young age are often called ‘child soldiers’. I always say that they are soldiers from whom their childhood has been taken away. And women with a weapon can be fierce fighters.”

The troops under the Dutch general’s command include brigades from India and Pakistan. Despite traditional rivalry between the two countries, in the eastern part of the Congo, they work closely together.

“In this mission we have Indian attack helicopters supporting Pakistani ground forces when they are engaged with armed groups. That is, I think, unique, and I’m very proud of the way those two contingents are operating in a very professional way. We never discuss domestic problems; we make fun of it sometimes, and they themselves as well. But they are brothers-in-arms in carrying out the mandate.”

Abundant resources

General Cammaert isn’t overly optimistic about the future in this part of the DRC. He believes it may take another 10-15 years to establish peace. One of the reasons is because the conflict is fuelled, not only by political and inter-ethnic rivalry, but also by the abundant presence of natural resources in the area: gold, diamonds, bauxite and precious metals.

General Cammaert is trying to get more high-tech military assets onto the MONUC mission, to improve the operational capabilities of his troops. But he also wants to improve the often-complicated UN rules and regulations:

“I think we can make huge improvements in doing a better job with the UN administration, with the system as such. That’s not a negative remark, it’s a fact. We should streamline those regulations and make sure [they] - and bureaucratic procedures - are destined for operations in the year 2005, and not […] like they were carried out ten years ago. Friend and foe will agree that, often, the present rules and regulations are not the best to operate with.”

In the end, a Snippet from Somewhere...

God, Make me strong, and weak.

Give me the courage to run the race,

and say no to it.

Give me friends, and keep me detached.

Teach me to laugh, cry, and to feel.

Teach me to let go, and forgive.

Teach me to remember, and thank.

Teach me to avenge.

Help me, to say no, and yes.

Help me, to bend and to be rigid.

Help me to trust,

but don’t make me naïve.

Help me learn about new things

And let me be.

Help me out with these...

I do not know where the road leads,

which turns to take...

what waits for me at each turn...

and whether anyone is to join me on the way...

On Mentorship

My Mentors

I have two mentors (self decided). The first one is Dr. Mathai Fenn a Prof of OB at XLRI. I guess I imposed myself on him but he was kind enough to consent to be my guide. The other is Atanu Guru. Atanu served with me some years back and and I learnt a lot from him. He is presently doing his PGP in Business Management from XIMB. Wishing him all the best for all future endeavours.


My perception of a Mentor. A person who can make a difference in your life. Some one who guides you , based on his own experience. These type of person are quite rare though not impossible to get. I have realised over the years, that such people are very good to talk to and they provide you a perspective that is unique and give you apt suggestions. They have no personal greed associted with the teaching that they provide. Its their own inherent feeling of giving, which guides them in mentoring others.

Mentor No.1 I had been interacting with Dr. Mathai in the recent past. I am rather impressed with him , since he is going out of the in helping me.I don’t think there is much I can give by the way of knowledge to him but he is still keen to help me achieve my goals. Given the case that I met him just 4-5 months ago, I truly admire the type of interest he is taking in helping me out. Probably he believes in knowledge enhancement as I do, hence he has agreed to help me out in the future as we go along in life. I would have to be a fool (no I think I’ll make it an idiot) to let go of such a chance.
I had have explained him the reasons as to why I want him to be my mentor.Hence he agreed to help me in personal enhancement in general and enrichment in the field of Organisation Behaviour in particular. He too understood my needs I suppose. Looking forward to a long and mutually benefitting relationship with him.

Mentor No.2 While Atanu and self were together for a very short duration (two years), he made an deep impact on my way of looking at life. A thorough gentleman, and a class I officer he is someone you can look upto in any kind of crisis.

Well, I would try to meet their expectations and would aspire to give them back a little bit of what they gave me.

Till next time. Take care…....

Hello world! A little bit more on I, me and myself- I think I got the I syndrome.

On my way to learning the ropes. Still making up my mind about why i need to do that.

While my passion for flying took over and I decidedto become a pilot, 15 years back I decided to divert into academics. I started with a MA in Personnel management, which was followed by a PG Diploma in Business Administration from Symbiosis Pune. Not being satisfied with this I went on to complete my MS in Strategic studies from Madras University. Training and Development is something close to my heart hence I also gained a Diploma in Training and Development form Indian Society for Training and Development. The academics bug bit me again when I learnt that University of North Bengal permitted Research Scholars to register for a Ph.D. in management. It was a long and ardous journey but I did manage to complete the doctorate in a little less than five years(10 days short from being debarred) with a good review from all five examiners.

Around this time I joined the United Nations on Deputation for a period of one year. All this while I thought I had a reasonable knowledge on diversity managemment but this was beyond my limits of understanding. However soon I got into the groove and there I was in Democratic Republic of Congo. Took me a while to understand the working of the United Nations but soon I was a master in diversity management. There were embarrasing incidents where one gesture could mean nothing to one person, while the same would offend another. One simple example is offering to shake hands with someone. While it was absolutely normal with a lady from the west there were embarrasing moments when the hand shake was refused by a recently inducted UN volunteer from middle east.

Based on my academic qualifications I was additionally tasked to take lectures on Human Resources and Psychology. Stress management, motivation, operating in diverse work environment, training issues, management of resources, TA and decision making were the favourite.

Life in the UN is quite tough. I thought i had a fair idea of the challenges involved in working for the UN, but looks like its going to be far more difficult than i imagined. There are things that happen out here. If any of you folks seen the staffing system of UN where the staff is full with bright people who are the best in their field. There is no rie-raf and each one is a thorough a professional. However the difficult conditions lead people to take tough decisions to leave UN inspite of a good pay pack due to continual stay away frrom their families and burnouts in the field. I see that happening to some of us too. Hope that teaching will keep me networked with some of the best people and help me keep focus for rest of my stay here.

An interest in academics made me to tilt further towards learning methodologies and training and I decided to go all out into teaching. Or maybe I will get into the management side of some really big voluntary organization like OCHA/OXFAM(influence of UN). I definitely want to make money doing what I like best.

A little bit about me

Well ! a strange looking blog, but that's how it is going to be, I guess! I am an aviator turned HR specialist who took the path less taken. I hold a PhD in Organisation development and am looking forward to changing over to academics. Am looking forward to a long and happy innings in this field. A lot of people ask me the reason for switching careers at such a late stage in life. My only reply to them is - You have only one life.

While it is a difficult decision, I am aware that if I fails it will be called a foolish move and if it succeeds it will be called a bold step.

I grew up in an academic environ, in Hyderabad, India where every one you met was a DOCTOR(PhD) in the field of agriculture. Guess I caught this terminal disease from there. Pop wanted me to become a medical Doctor but I prefered to become a pilot. My Granny told my parents that I would someday become a pilot or a doctor. Last month I became both, after getting a Doctorate in the field of Organisation Behaviour.

Additional Information about me

Academics

I have the following qualifications:-
1. MA in Public, Personnel and Management(Osmania University)
2. MSc in Defence and Strategic Studies(Madras University)
3. PG Diploma in Business Administration(Symbiosis, Pune)
4. Diploma in Training & Development(ISTD, New Delhi)
5. PhD in Organisation Development, topic being Team Building (North Bengal University)

A Humble beginning

Started this blog based on the advice of Dr.Mathai B. Fenn of XLRI who motivated me to start.(http://www.mathaifenn.blogspot.com/) . This being my first post, I dedicate this blog to him.

How, why,what, when etc., shall be answered by me in due course of time.

More later.