An Indecisive Indian

  We talked about your organization being your world and you must unriddle it fully to see what lay inside. You have to keep your eyes peeled, your ears to the ground and your mind wide open as if your charge was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. So far so good but how do you start? Start with love!   Love? Well, what is it that you need, first and foremost, to do anything anywhere? Leadership, yes. Will and determination, absolutely. Vision, strategy and planning, sure. Motivation and teamwork, most certainly. I am no management guru but these are answers I get to this simple question and all are essential. But, did I not say, foremost? I believe that, first and foremost, the answer is simple: love what you do . It follows that you would then, naturally, love your organization and treat your colleagues with empathy.   Love your men . Love them in the spirit of what the poet Jigar Moradabadi said,   Ik lafz-e-mohabbat kā adnā ye fasānā hai simTe to di

Moscow, October 1993: In those chaotic days after the end of the Soviet Union, the President and the parliament were at loggerheads. President Yeltsin was angling to dissolve the then Congress of People’s Deputies and Parliament, the Supreme Soviet, in a manner not authorized by the constitution. On 3rd October, demonstrators, beseeched by their leaders, removed the police cordons around the Russian White House, the then seat of the parliament, took over the Mayor's office and stormed the main television centre. Subsequently, the army, which was hitherto neutral, heeded to Yeltsin’s demand and stepped in force in early morning hours of 4th October. Army tanks began to shell the building and soon, the leaders of the resistance were arrested. The world watched in horror and speculated if Russia was on the brink. Well, it did not baulk and pulled back but the ten-day conflict became the deadliest single event of people fighting the army since the days of the Revolution in Russia.