My daughter and I were travelling together in her car. We always sit in the rear seat and we use this opportunity to have long conversations as our chauffeur negotiates the car through the thick Mumbai traffic. I was on my way to my office and she to her college.

As we spoke, I suddenly told her of a specific personal productivity problem I am currently facing and asked her to develop a solution by end of today. I told her she is my consultant and she needs to give me advice. She took the assignment pretty seriously and came up with a brilliant solution. I am so proud of her.

I learnt the following from this experience:

1. Children are great problem solvers. They are very creative.
2. Involving them teaches them that every problem has a solution and they need to think it through.
3. The parent child bonding is rapidly enhanced
4. Parents can get very creative solutions which they would have never even thought about.

Moreover if you implement their solution and demonstrate success to them, they will truly develop immense self-esteem and have confidence to solve problems.

Children should be involved, wherever possible, in developing solutions to common family problems along with the parents. This will come a long way for strengthening family bonding and creatively solving problems together.

A colleague of mine came back, today, after successfully finishing a project. He came to me and started narrating to me the various victories he had won while implementing the project. I could see him, right in front of me, so happy and confident. It was his first project.

The person in front of me, today, was a stark contrast to the person he was, before he went to the project. I changed, completly changed, my opinion of him and I firmly, now, believe he will be a great asset to my team.

I learnt several lessons from this experience:

1. Never lose faith in the potential of your followers
2. Groom them with the hope they will perform
3. Take time to form conclusions of people by giving them a chance to perform
4. Most important, people need that initial success to build confidence in themselves

How quickly we judge people and form opinions. We need to nurture them and believe in their potential. This is true in work, as well as, in families, especially, while dealing with children. I have seen parents, teachers, bossess, peers label people and these labels stick to them for their entire lives. Some of these labels are destructive and can cause a lot of harm.

Do you have labels stuck to you? It is time to examine them.

A colleague of mine just made a business presentation. It was average. How is it that people stay unprepared? You need to be prepared all the time. This is a great competitive advantage. Just like a great musician may be called to perform suddenly and she gives a brilliant performance, similarly in every walk of life one needs to be prepared-always prepared. A student for a test, a doctor for a surgery, a business man for a presentation, a pilot for a take off, a soldier for a combat, an employee for a promotion, --- the list can go on and on.

The difference between mediocrity and excellence is preparedness, because when you are called to perform you have no time for anything else.

Sometimes when you are sincere and nice to people they back stab you. Your kindness, compassion, and desire to improve the person professionally and personally will be interpreted as weakness.

A leader can tolerate everything except dishonesty and disloyalty. In such a situation, he has to take the iron hand out of his velvet glove and act. It is then time to remove that person from the team, division, company, or country.

What do you think---?

It is important to have different alternative sources of income. Becoming financially independent is a goal that needs to be set in childhood. How many of us as parents help our children to set this goal.

It is not surprising at all if your child emulates you and ends up in the same financial status as you are in-positive or negative.

The best way to teach a child is through role-modeling.

I have this tendency to go to important events unprepared. This springs from a sense of overconfidence. Then, invariably, while the event is unfolding, I wish I had gone there better prepared.

It is important to prepare oneself fully for important events in life. Doing a pre-critique is crucial and will go a long way in preparing yourself for important turning points in your life.

Does that mean that you need to be prepared for each and every event? Not at all! However, you definitely need to know which are the crucial ones you will need thorough preperation.

A FPL is important and should be drawn out periodically. What is a FPL? It is nothing but a "Fully Prepared" List which needs to be fully prepared.

How much planning needs to go into a day? Am I doing things that really matter? How do I determine what those important things are?

How many of us like planning? What impact does planning have on our personality type? What impact does our personality type have over our planning? Can all personality types plan effectively? Can all personality types enjoy planning?
These are profound questions, that needs to be answered. We need to negotiate with ourselves about the task of planning.

Without planning everything tends to move towards chaos. However, there needs to be some form of chance or serendepity to come to play, periodically, to shake us out of the rut we fall into.

Effective life is finding a balance between planning and random chance/serendipity. For those who enjoy planning, they need to learn to enjoy chance and randomness and those who enjoy flexibility, randomness and serendipity, they need to learn to enjoy planning. It is not "either -or". It is "and".

I recently was interviewing a group of fresh MBAs to take them as Management Trainees in our organization. These MBAs hailed from a premier business school. As I interviewd them, one by one, it suddenly dawned upon me, how ill prepared these candidates were. In fact, that interview day was one of the most important days in their lives.

Life brings us to these important days, periodically. How we fair and excell on these days depend on how well we have been preparing for them. For many of these important days, which are actually turning points, the preparation required may be a lifetime.

These students were trying to shortcut the process. An Olympic Gold Medal is won only by years of practice. For a short marothon run you may need to invest days, months, and years of effort. Think about it---

How many of us have a talent inventory of ourselves? We need to constantly check what our talents are and also take stock of which ones we are using effectively.

Using our talents effectively will help us to forge ahead and live a fun filled life.

Why run on land when you have hidden wings by which you can fly high?

How many of us give sufficient time for ourselves. To be alone for a few hours and look back at life can have therapeutic effect. Otherwise, what happens is we react from one situation to another, with no time even to think. With email, cell phone, pagers, RSS, TV, Radio, Video Games, IM, and people to distract us and keep us engaged, we end up alienating ourselves.

We need to establish relationship with ourselves first before we can have meaningful relationship with others.

So, get to quiet place, be alone and say "Hello" to yourself. Do you recognize yourself? What have you become? Are you the same? Try it and share your experience with others

Why do people take short cuts? It is risky and dangerous. It is one thing to take short cuts on a key board and totally another thing to take short cuts in life. In fact, short cuts are very contextual in nature and may do harm or good depending on the nature of the situation.

In this age of instant gratification people treat their lives as if it was a key board. Parents use the control & shift key too often with their children leaving them confused and bewildered.

People use short cuts to enhance their relationships with others. They portray a false image of themselves and try to win admiration from people who matter to them. However, people see through the facade quickly and the end result is that they lose their respect as quickly as they won it.

It is very important to be aware when we can take short cuts and when we need to pay the price by our effort.

It is amazing how perseverance can dissolve obstacles and get things done. I just completed a task that I was postponing for quite a long time. It was unpleasent and I was avoiding it.

I was using other tasks as distractions or excuses to avoid this one. Today I set aside time, and returned back to the task when ever I was interrupted and determined not to leave the office till I completed it.

Looking back, it was not as bad as I imagined it to be. Most of the obstacles are in our minds and we create them.

What do you think?

Where does your self-esteem come from? For some people it comes from their title, for some from the organization they work for or for some the family or nation they belong to.

More your self-esteem is tied to some thing external, the more vulnerable you are. Self-esteem should come from a strong character base which springs from a stream of wholesome values. Self-esteem should be based more on one's own contribution in different areas of life, more than anything else.

How many of us get stuck in a rut. Some people are not even aware that they are in a rut. Even small steps towards new pathways can change our perspective and give us a breath of fresh air we all need ---

What steps ahve you taken to explore new frontiers? When did you last find a new way to drive to your office? When did you buy a new magazine you have never laid hands upon before? When did you eat in a totally new restaurant?

Whatever you start you need to follow through. This is one area I need improvement, especially when I start multiple things and finally get lost. I am exploring different ways to stay focused and will report here.

What are the techniques to stay focused? If you as a reader know special ways to stay focused, please do share.

What do you do when people lie to you? or tell you half-truths? In such cases it is very important to study facts and inquire completly. This is very important , especially, when other people are involved.

It is one thing to trust and let go, it is a totally different thing to abdicate. Sometimes I trust people too much and take it as a given that they are performing and all is well with them and who they are serving. Many a times I interpret no news as good news. I think this approach to leadership is very dangerous. Trust but verify from all quarters---

If you want to change a habit, you must also examine an ecology of other habits feeding into or supporting/hindering the one you want to change. For example-not exercising may be linked to watching TV, getting up late, sleeping late, overeating, no true recreation --- the list could go on.

Eliciting these interlinked habits and creating a new ecology will be needed to support the new habit in the long term. One cannot start too big nor can one start too small. What is important is addressing the key ones to bring about change.

When a husband and wife fights in front of everyone it is a sad spectacle to watch. The blame game that triggered this fight (misplaced air tickets) is perhaps the tip of the iceberg. It is very important to resolve conflicts in the real time rather than wait for it to accumulate.

In the absence of conflict resolution the dart board gets bigger and bigger along with the number of darts you have with you to use against each other.

I wonder how they will be feeling now, with continents seperating them, litterally and figuratively ---

Some people switch their behaviour depending on the type of person they meet. This is what I was observing in my colleague and thus gave him critique about it. This springs from an opportunistic leadership style.

Such people are rarely liked. They are abrasive with a lot of people they meet and selectively very nice to some. They use differential treatment to get along and progress in life. However, little do they realize that they cannot go too far.

However far they may go in life, in variably they will find themselves alone with no one to cheer and clap for them.

Today, I reacted to a behaviour from another person, totally, in a different manner, as I would have reacted to the same behaviour a year back. Perhaps, I changed the way I looked at the behaviour and forgot to tell the person who initiated it. This resulted in a lot of surprise and diasappointment for both of us. I heard comments like"This is not you"

I had to explain myself and try to talk myself out of the behaviour, which was not very effective.

What I learnt is that one needs to examine one's way of looking at various things periodically. All of us change, most of us, silently, and we often forget to communicate to other people around us. Communicating upront to people around us will save us all a lot of unpleasent surprises.