Category Archives: A new sunrise

Had the opportunity recently to take part in a forum on the above subject. The session solicited areas that are not usually taught in schools. Got some fantastic responses. I have consolidated the answers. It will be useful for parents, teachers, trainers and students themselves. Feel Free to add your own ideas to the list. Each point can be developed into projects that can make the new generature Future Proof…..

Learning
Curiosity, to know all the answers
Understanding ones predominant Intelligence (from the 7 different intelligences) and ones predominant learning style (from the 3)
How to adapt ones Learning Method to one’s Learning Style and Intelligence
Memory Techniques
Speed Reading
Apt Foreign Language (Could be Arabic in the Middle East)
The ability to research and seek out information
Writing Skills
History…and how to avoid mistakes
The value of lifelong learning

Self-Awareness
what makes them inspired
what provokes them
what gives them joy
What makes them sad
What are their strengths and weaknesses
Understanding their personality and communication styles

Social Skills
How to have positive relationships with others
Anger Management
How to seek feedback and clarify to avoid misunderstandings
How to handle criticism
How to refrain from mind reading and avoid biases from influencing them
Effective communication
Common courtesy and Good Manners
Reading and Managing emotions in self and others

Moral Compass
Spirituality
Ethical Behavior
Integrity
To be thankful for what they have
The Value of Service and Giving
Respect for others
Compassion and Empathy
Respect and to value the cultural diversity in our world

Traits
Self-confidence
Personal accountability
Commitment to seeing a project through
Taking responsibility for our own actions
Problem-solving
Initiative
Decision making
Creative thinking
Confidence to explore new ideas
Ambition, Goal Setting and Goal management
Survival-how to get over with any situation and persistence
How to handle failure and pressure
Overcoming obstacles to any goal
Influencing Skills, to make others follow
Presentation skills, to convince a group
Collaboration, how to work well in a team
Drive for continous self improvement

Life Skills
Value of Time and Money
How the working world works
what people like and dislike about their job
what does a typical day consist of
what would they change if could go back and start again
Basic banking
Insurance
Liability
Credit card responsibility
Balancing a budget
Technology skills to be faster and more efficient

The other day, a good friend of mine called on me at my office. During the customary small talk, he shared with me a not so great experience that he had at one of our branches. Pushing the liberties that he enjoyed with me to the very extreme, he spat out-“Ibrahim, your customer service %&^%&”. Though I immediately got into the offensive and started a hugely unconvincing lecture on the topic “100 reasons why we are better than the rest of the world”, his comment pushed me into a reflective Self introspective mood later on. Even with all those Trainings, Incentive programs and Morale boosting events, why were we unsuccessful in getting our customer facing staff to behave professionally?

Being a huge fan and an ardent user of LinkedIn, I posted my predicament on a couple of busy forums and voila!!!! A plethora of simple, easy to implement, yet effective suggestions started pouring in. And as I delved into each of them, I realized that with a little bit of creative thinking, they can be implemented in every area where one is facing gaps in performance. From improving the behavior of children, spouses, colleagues, Bosses and your own esteemed self. With a million thanks to all those wise online friends who cared to share, let me reproduce their ideas here.

Inspire their hearts- Give them the big picture. Create a Vision statement that paints a motivating mental picture of their department getting the award from the CEO for the best department in the organization. Fill the Vision statements with adjectives that they want to hear about themselves. Make them see this statement every day.

Make expectations crystal clear every day– Have pre shift and post shift meetings. People have really short memories

Give Feedback and constructive criticism assertively

Ensure availability of guidelines, support and resources- Help them do the job better

Prepare behavior standards like “I will always greet the customer before the customer greets me” and make staff evaluate each other.

Speak to the staff, understand their issues and get their suggestions

Make them aware that they are constantly watched… through mystery shoppers and similar approaches

Get them together regularly and let them reflect and come out with creative ways to improve service

Change Roles– Get them to experience the service that they provide. Let them feel the pain

Use Pleasure and Pain– Measure performance regularly and align it with incentive and punitive measures

Get them to brainstorm and come out with 7 Customer Service values, like “Make the customer feel respected”. Give them ways to live each of these values. Share with them real case studies (which involve them) about each of these values. Make story- telling and appreciation a regular feature of every team briefing.

Use Positive change agents to observe and coach associates

Encourage staff to go out and about, into other branches and retail outlets to observe customer service

Coach the Leaders who coach and manage the front line staff

Make sure that every department supports the front liners in the best possible ways through approaches like Service level Agreements

Put together a video recording of a few customers who speak about what has delighted them and what has pained them in their interactions with the organization, and show it to staff members

Arrange monthly ‘Welcome to Work days’ where employees were given a warm welcome, a cup of coffee & pastry (by a different dept every month) on arrival at the staff entrance similar to the welcome that a hotel guest would receive

Facilitate Customer Service incentives – bingo cards with various customer (or sales) orientated tasks….the teams worked out the prizes themselves i.e. the winner gets coffee made for them for a week or gets to choose his/her quota for a week

Wall of Fame – photos and achievements to be posted on a wall in the staff room

Have a “Get to Know You Day“? Everyone spends sometime getting to know a little more about each other

Implement an awards program recognizing both individual and team performance regarding customer service

Treat your staff the way you want them to treat your customers

Allow each branch to share the best practices that they have implemented to improve service

Interview staff that have consistently fared well and share their ways of thinking and feeling with all staff

I am sure that this list will help you a lot. Please feel free to share your own thoughts. Once again, let me express my gratitude to all my online friends who helped me to put this list together.

How much are you obsessed with Face book, say on a scale from 1 to 10?

If your score reads 8 or more, then please do read through this post. Otherwise you can close this page and navigate back to Dazebook. Oh no!! How can I be so obsolete?. You don’t have to open any browser anymore. You can just click that fancy looking widget in your smart phone and enter that virtual wonderland which is quickly becoming the world’s most populated community (Beating even China)

What do I (Imagine, Ibrahim against Mark Zucky and his die hard millions) have against Face book? Let me very humbly put up a list of perils.

Puts you in a Cocoon: When people are on Face book, they forget their surroundings completely. Ringing doorbells, crying babies, calls for help, squeals of delight……..all gets filtered out as one does the all so important task of commenting “So cuteeee……..” “Koochi Kooo”, or clicking the “I Like” icon or forwarding some “Much seen and better avoided” pics or video links.

No friends in the Real world: Visits to the neighbors, Social get togethers… where you meet real people are slowly dwindling away, as one gets more and more addicted to reading just updated status messages and coming up with posts for yourself. Where will you get time to smile when you are busy uploading pictures of your cat, kitchen, laundry bag etc , for the entertainment of all those “People you may know”. Speaking about addiction, I have seen people rushing back to this daze world every other minute to play one of the hundreds of games available, even at the dead of the night.

No time to learn and develop: 2 hours on face book every day- that’s 12.5% of the time that you are awake. If you live up to 65, you would have spent almost 9 years socializing. Just imagine the opportunity costs involved. What benefits would you have gained if you had used this time to learn and develop?

Unwanted Exposure: Congrats!!! you have made yourself completely exposed to the world. Anyone who wants to find out anything about you will be able to do so now. If you have people in your life who want to stalk you or intimidate you, it will be a cake walk for them . Maybe you have some old friends who you don’t want to talk to anymore or someone you owe money to. Thanks to Dazebook, you are just a click away. Please make sure to provide your age, birth date, address, location, occupation, and other personal information. It will make it easier for Identity thieves to take advantage of you. And yes- Simple things like a picture that has your car’s license plate in it or posting a status message saying that you’ll be on vacation for the next week is better than sending a direct invitation for burglars to rob your house.

Possibility of Conflict: Even with all your maturity and patience, you may not be able to put up with the actions of those cool dudes who create stupid status messages, upload embarrassing picture and many other ridiculous actions. Dazebook thus opens up a million chances for you to lose your cool.

No hierarchies: When I was small, I wouldn’t dare to enter my Grandfathers room. Now my son and his great uncle appear simultaneously on pages adorned with sick jokes and vulgar comments. The other day, my 10 year old was caught opining “I want to get in touch with my 3rd grade teacher again. I want to ask her whether she is on Face book”

Socializing or flirting ?: I don’t want to elaborate. But I personally know of more than a dozen divorces that happened due to face book and scores of parents have come to us seeking help. “My 9 year old daughter is flirting with a much senior man ….HELP !!!!!”

Thank god!!! I have managed to evade this addiction till now. To all those who tell me to also look at the positive side of things and to give credit to Face book for its benefits… I would like to quote Islam’s take on alcohol. “It has good sides and bad sides and the bad sides heavily outweigh the good ones”. So go ahead…. Take a calculated risk if you want… if you think that you can handle it.

My wife came to me as I was cozily drifting into my Saturday slumber, drawn out on the comfortable living room sofa. She had the list of the Top news stories of the 21st century complied by the Global Language Monitor. The curious lady had questions about every one of them to her well informed and authoritatively opinionated better half.

Fortunately I had answers for every single question- the same one…

News item number 1: The Rise of China

Question: “How can someone be a communist and hyper-capitalist at the same time. Aren’t they mutually exclusive?”

News item number 2: Election of Barack Obama

Question: “How could the whole world (even you ) be foolish enough to unanimously dream that any president would actually bring changes to US policies?”

News item number 3: Death of Osama Bin Laden

Question: “How could some Muslims support Osama Bin Laden when he is said to have killed innocent men, women and children?”

Another one on the same item

Question: “They said that Saddam Hussein was captured in December. But as he was being dragged out of the fox hole, we could see date palms laden with ripe fruit (which ripens only in summer) in the background. And then you have the WMD story. They have lost their credibility. So how can we trust the same guys now?”

News item number 4: Wiki leaks

Question: “The Swedish Prosecution Authority had dropped the warrant for Assange a few hours after his previous arrest. Then why was he arrested again. That too after his site was taken off from one server after the other on instructions given by the US Government?”

News item number 5: British Royal Wedding

Question: “Why is the world going Gaga over the wedding of a man from a tiny island whose Great Grand Father once brutally ruled most of the world ?”

News item number 6: Death of Michael Jackson

Question: “All the child molestation charges against him were dropped because he gave the parents truckloads of money. Does this make him guilty or innocent ?”

News item number 7: Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States

Question: “Who really did this?”

News item number 8: Japanese Tsunami

Question: “Even after all these years of scientific progress, are we so helpless against the forces of nature ?”

News item number 9: Arab Spring uprisings

Question: “Don’t these leaders who used brutal force against their own people fear god and the judgment day ?”

News item number 10: Global economic meltdown

Question: “Will you get your bonus this year ?”

My consistent answer was “I don’t know, sweetheart”.

Thanks to our Organization, I had the god given opportunity to attend a session on Thalassemia today. Though it lasted only a few minutes, it was indeed life changing.

I know now that……

Even though one could have 2 or 3 healthy children (thanks to the almighty), their next child could be Thalassemic (god forbid) since both the parents could be silent carriers of this killer disease. Carriers show absolutely no symptoms and the presence of this treacherous gene can be detected only through a blood test. Good news is that the test is available at all medical centers and is covered by most insurance companies.

Being from this part of the world makes us more vulnerable to this disease as majority of the patients hail from Asia, Middle east and the Mediterranean. In the UAE, you have an estimated number of 1 million carriers, which is almost 12% of the population.

What happens if your child has Thalassemia?

Well, you start noticing it when the baby starts showing symptoms of anemia and also disinterest towards being fed. If he or she is diagnosed with the disease, then the child will have to be given blood transfusions every two weeks for the rest of his life. He will also have to be given injections daily to offset the excess iron that enters the body due to the transfusions. The only way to cure the child is to get a bone marrow transplant. The chances of finding a matching donor are very bleak and the costs associated with this process are phenomenal and prohibitive. So 99% of the patients choose to continue with the painful and frustrating ordeal of needles and pain.

What should you do if you do a test and find that you are indeed a carrier?

Test your spouse as well and if he/she is also tested positive, think a million times before planning for a baby. Yes!!! your baby might turn out to be unaffected though the chances of the same are very little. Note that there are no other ways to prevent this disease. If either of you are carriers, you should also test your children. If they are above 2, they may have been spared of this disease. But it is better to be aware early in order to take extra precautions, when they plan to marry and start a family.

What can all of us do?

Spread the awareness. UAE has a Thalassemia center which offers free treatment and counseling to patients and parents. Today Dr. Essam from this centre shared with us some heart wrenching stories about these children and their plight. Some of them were even deserted by their parents since they couldn’t endure the prospect of living with this challenge. In so many other countries of this world, kids die every day because they don’t either receive treatment or blood. So in addition to spreading awareness, you can…

Click Here to be inspired

Organize a group and Call 04-2193794 and they will send their bus to you. Increase the longevity of at least one innocent child by sharing a few drops of your blood.

Donate money to the centre in the UAE or in your respective countries. Delay the purchase of that new phone by a few weeks. Cut down a few days from your holiday package and you will gift some innocent souls precious extra hours, days or even years…. Make your money matter.

Go ahead….. do something………Here is a chance for you to make a difference!!!!!

You can contact mapinto@dohms.gov.ae for more details.

Let me share with you a few simple steps that can accelerate your growth in your current role manifold. If you have been getting those elusive promotions only once in 3 years (or even less often), you can gift yourselves these careers lifts in at least half the time if you simply follow these steps. There are just 5 of them. Like the 5 gears of a racing car. Each can serve as the turbo rockets that can thrust you onto the victory laps instantly.

Step 1: Find at least 2 people in this planet who are doing your same role exceedingly well. They could be from other departments or even from different Organizations. But make sure that it is from the same industry and the organization has a similar scale of operation. If you are the head of software development at the neighborhood computer one stop shop, don’t have the name of the person adorning the same role in Microsoft in your list. All those who are working in learning and development, please feel free to put my name…Ha Ha

Got them down? Now contact them, follow them, haunt them, solicit and get an appointment. Nowadays Social networking sites are bringing down Governments, so reaching that role model shouldn’t be very tough. Hope you read the sarcasm in the sentence correctly. No excuses. Meet them.

After the pleasantries, ask him two straightforward questions.

Name three projects/incidents where you performed exceedingly well?
Name three projects/incidents where you failed?

For both these questions, get more details by probing further. Who were involved? Who said what? Who did what? Why did you do that? When? What results did you get? How did you know what to do?List them down religiously in a journal. Make sure that you drain them out.

Congratulate and thank them. Go make their day/week/whatever……..

Go back home and analyze the differences between the two sets of answers. What you now have is what we call Competencies. These are behaviors that empower star performers to get the results that make them successful.

Good Positive start. Let’s go ahead…

Post this list on your notice board.
Step 2:

Write down three or four of the major objectives that your Organization want you to deliver this year or in the coming two three years. If you don’t have them yet, contact your boss and demand them. Ideally these should have been cascaded down from Organizational and Departmental objectives.

Now break these objectives down to three of four major roles

If your objective is to Increase sales of product A by 30%, Roles could be

A: Finding new Organizations who would buy your product
B: Selling more of your product to existing customers
C: Enlisting new business partners

Now break these roles further into tasks. Don’t get bored and log off…. We are closer to the finish line now.

A1: Creating prospect list
A2: Locating and contacting the apt stakeholder
A3: Presenting your product
A4: Negotiating and procuring the contract

Break B and C into tasks along similar lines

Now that you have the list of tasks

Write down the list of Competencies (behaviors) that you need to achieve these objectives. Make sure that you have aspects of Knowledge, skills and Attitudes in your list. Examples could be….

Knowledge

Knowledge of products to explain benefits to customers
Knowledge of competing products to address objections and present benefits
Knowledge of market to reach potential customers

Skills

Presentation Skills to persuade the customer
Negotiation Skills to get your expectations
Proposal making skills to prepare influencing proposals

Attitudes

Self Confidence to make cold calls and meet stakeholders
Interpersonal Skills to develop rapport
Persistence to stay put even if customer says No

I don’t claim the above list to be perfect. It could vary from case to case. Now validate this list by referring to the ones that you got from the role models. Bring in Knowledge Skill and Attitude components that were on their list even if you don’t have any of these competencies currently.

What you have in front of you now, is your road map to success. If you score yourself high in each of these competencies, you will be a superhero in your organization… for having over achieved all objectives assigned to you, since Competency along with Commitment lead to success.

What to do next……. Steps 3, 4 and 5….

What are these steps, How to go about them………I will continue in the next post provided I get at least two replies from any of my favorite readers with the list of competencies that they have come up with.
Please send them to sangeethibrahim@yahoo.com

I am waiting……

As the world’s most ambitious blogger stealthily sneaked away from his unshakeable commitment to write at least 2 posts every week, visits to his “Next big thing on the blogosphere” work of art dropped drastically. If not for the curiosity of a handful of diehard fans, the eyeball count would have dropped below 200, the lowest ever. Shame on me……

I can of course attribute the inactivity to a not so expected promotion, a visit to Geneva to accept an award on behalf of the bank and a trip to Oman to attend a sister’s engagement. But excuses apart, the sight of an elderly traveler jogging within the terminal of Zurich airport reminded me of the unbreakable connection between consistency and commitment.

While the blogger rested, the world indeed moved on (as time and tide waits for no one)…. And HOW?????. If I may mis-quote Shakespeare from his play Julius Caesar, the Ides of March have been indeed bewildering. For those who look confused, The Ides of March is the name of March 15 in the Roman calendar, probably referring to the day of the full moon. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar meets a seer who foretells him that harm would come to him not later than the Ides of March. And it did indeed.

And years after Caesar’s assassination, the Ides is back again, unleashing a series of events that would probably change the world for ever.

Unprecedented Protests in Syria, Oman, Yemen, Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Retaliation by the army. Deaths. Entry of Gulf Shield forces into Bahrain. The Sultan of Oman dismisses three senior ministers.

As forces loyal to Gadaffi began winning over rebels, Nato backed by a UN resolution starts bombing targets in Libya. Mixed reactions from the international community.

NATO forces kill 9 Afghan children while they collected firewood; this is the third NATO attack on civilians in the last 2 weeks.

Eleven people are sentenced to death and twenty to life sentences for their roles in the Godhra train burning in New Delhi, India.

Dozens of people are killed in fighting between rebels and troops in Southern Sudan.

Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities and himself a Roman Catholic, is assassinated in Islamabad.

Pope Benedict XVI exonerates the Jewish people for the responsibility for the death of Jesus in his book Jesus of Nazareth.

The Bangladeshi central bank attempts to remove Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank which he founded.

Apple Inc unveils the latest model of its tablet computer, the I Pad 2.

The United Nations says world food prices are at their highest for 20 years.

Mazda recalls approximately 50,000 Mazda6 sedans after finding that a spider web could cause the fuel tank to crack and leak.

P. J. Thomas, India’s chief of anti-corruption, resigns over charges brought against him of corruption stemming from 1992.

NASA’s attempt to launch the Glory satellite aboard a Taurus XL rocket fails.

Following rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip on southern Israel, Israeli air force planes bomb Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip.

Oil prices rise to their highest level in 29 months as fighting in Libya intensifies.

Israeli troops and settlers open fire upon Palestinians in the West Bank while they repaired orchards previously attacked by settlers, injuring 8 Palestinians.

Clashes between Christian Copt and Muslims in the Egyptian capital Cairo kill 13 people and injure 140.

The 14th Dalai Lama announces plans to retire as the head of the Tibetan exile movement within days.

An 9.0 magnitude earthquake hits Japan, producing tsunamis as high as 10 meters near the epicenter and reaching land throughout the Pacific ocean. A nuclear meltdown occurred at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant disabled by the Japanese earthquake and a state of emergency is declared at five plants. The Government of Japan evacuates over 200,000 people as fear of nuclear contamination from the power plants grow. The death toll exceeds 20,000.

A Palestinian armed with a knife infiltrates the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabs to death two Israeli parents and three of their children. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemns the Palestinian attack. Israel approves the construction of hundreds of homes for Israeli settlers in the West Bank in response to the same.

At least 40 people, most believed to be civilians, are killed near Mira shah after United States drones bomb Pakistan in the deadliest such attack by the United States since 2006.

More than 80 per cent of votes in the Egyptian constitutional referendum support liberal reforms. 

The ICC world cup progresses, with its usual doses of predictable and surprising results. India is to play Australia tmrw, which would be our most important match in the tournament. Will the little master score his 100th 100? Will we win and go on to lift the world cup ?

All the above incidents have short term and long term implications for all of us. Some make us glad. Some make us sad and feel bad. Each of them provide a million questions and lessons……

Should we bother to do Long term planning?

Why do we still harbor so much hatred?

I hope blogging will get promoted on my priority list. Otherwise its identity and existence may get buried in the ides of the coming months……

“Life Position ???? …..what is he up to this time ?”, you may be wondering. It’s just a sliver from this amazing psychological theory called Transactional Analysis.

Wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don’t log off….. don’t let the jargon tick you off. it’s simple to understand and apply. Just read through till the very end and you will know what it is all about.

When you were crawling around your house in your best birthday suit, you took a basic decision about yourself and all the people around you. The way you perceive yourself and the rest of world and the way you behave therein is based very much on this basic stance that you took before the age of 2.

These are four positions, one of which you have taken. They are…

I am Ok, You are OK
I am OK, you are not OK
I am not OK, you are not OK
I am not OK, You are OK

It is said that by default we are all born with an “I am not OK, you are OK ” stance. Understandable. Because we were all born pretty helpless and tiny into a world of giants. We could do nothing on our own and we depended on these giants for everything. So we assumed that there is something fundamentally wrong with ourselves, though all others are perfect.

Once in a while these giants (one of them in particular) took us in her arms, fed us, kept us warm and whispered sweet sounding things . During this process and for some time after this, we felt different and we changed our stance to I am OK, you are Ok. When the fondling became irregular or seldom or when we were denied of something (food, dry nappy), we switched back to the default stance.

After a few months, we started crawling around and became explorers. And we got hurt. We bawled!!!!!!!. In certain cases no one was there to attend to us and comfort us. So we took another position. I am OK, You are not OK. We assumed that there is something wrong with people around us. They cannot be trusted or relied upon.

In extreme cases we were neglected all together or we were punished so badly that we took up the fourth position- I am not OK, You are not OK. There is something fundamentally wrong with me and all others. People are unreliable, untrustworthy and wrong in so many ways ….

Though we would all have taken these 4 stances at different stages of our childhood, we adopted a fundamental stance by the age of 7 and this decision that we took rules us and influences every bit of behavior that we display today.

As adults too, we shift across all these positions, but in times of stress and duress, we go back to our fundamental position and operate only from there…..

Under stress, If…..

I believe that I am not OK, you are OK, I will get away from others and hide myself. I will feel inferior. Will not fight for my rights and will feel depressed.

I believe that I am OK, you are OK, I will be open with others and will welcome openness from others. This is a position of maturity and assertiveness.

I believe that I am not OK, You are not OK, I will not have any hope. I can never be OK, nor could you give me what I need. This leads to a state of futileness.

I believe that I am OK, you are not OK, I will be paranoid and will try my best to get rid of you to be OK. I will boss you around. Treat you like ^%&^ and will try to destroy you ruthlessly.

You may take different life positions in different contexts. But your true life position will be apparent in your most intimate relationships.

Without saying much, it is obvious that the best stance to take is I am OK, You are OK. This is where you respect yourself and the rest of the world. You will first listen to others and seek to understand and only then try to make others understand. This is the position that creates true WIN-WIN situations.

Which Position are you in and how can you get into the I am OK, you are OK track…. Well!! As always… Read on………

A Jan winter night
Soldiers passing by
Listening to the winds of change.

The haunting strains of this ever popular Scorpion’s song has been running amok in my head for the last couple of weeks….ever since that young unemployed graduate Sidi Bouzid stood in the main square of his village , doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire.

As he ran helter skelter through the streets, screaming in agony before dying of his burns on 4th January, his shrieks awakened something…that was stirring restlessly in its sleep for decades. As he breathed his last he bequeathed his life on to something that was waiting behind the curtains…..awaiting its grand entry. Waiting for that someone somewhere to decide that it was enough and that it cannot be taken any more…..

The embers from his lifeless form caught on…..setting hearts on fire. One…. Two…. Three… till it stumbled upon critical mass… and the inferno beckoned the future.

The future’s in the air
I can feel it everywhere
blowing with the wind of change

Even well trained, die hard soldiers lowered their guns. Citadels of power crumbled. Bastions of tyranny imploded and the dreaded, tormentors fled for dear life. Moving from threshold to door….begging for sanctuary. As a nation rejoiced.

As an ardent student of change management, I have always tried to touch and feel the magic of the drivers of change. Some undefined thresholds that get breached somehow starting that slow and steady fall of the dominoes.

That threshold that was breached once again by Sidi and will be by many like him again…..

So many things to be changed. Within us and without. Bad habits. Bad attitudes, Bad systems.

How far are we from the thresholds? And where could Sidi be?

Still unborn

Still Working as a vegetable merchant,

or

Still staring at that crackling matchstick?

Take me to the magic of the moment
on a glory night
where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change

(This song just refuses to let go)