WHEN THE IDOLS FALL…………………………….

Two fields that give men and women the utmost glamour are sports and cinema. In both, the heroes (the heroines and the villains) have larger than life image. They are recipients of unlimited adulation from public at large. People are willing to wait for hours to see them. A shake hand from them would make anyone’s life. A photograph with them will make a person a celebrity. These are Idols! For people, they are living Gods.

And among these Gods, there stand out certain names for their clean image and fairness. They have unblemished records in their professional and personal lives. The names that immediately come to mind are Amitabh Bachchan, Richard Harrison, Roger Federer, Sachin Tendulkar, Steffi Graf & Tiger Woods. They represent ethics, morale, decency and above all fairness. No doubt, they too are human beings with emotions, but by far, these men and women could balance their lives and emotions and come through very clean to the public. And we adored these champions for not only what they are but also for their qualities. And these men and women are invited by organizations such UN etc to be its Ambassadors for spreading the goodwill around the world.

And then there are names such as Beckham, Ronaldo, Maradona, The khans of Bollywood and the scores of Hollywood stars. All these are very presentable and enigmatic personalities. They too were recipients of unadulterated adulation of the fans. However, these men and women were also famous for their emotions, tantrums and fallibilities. Names of many famous (also infamous) men and women were linked up with them and these names changed very periodically. The Lals and Kumar and Khans and Khannas live a make-believe life where fans and followers of all age, beeline behind them. They get everything on the platter and also in multitudes; to the extent their rejects are more than the accepteds. This leads to one night stands and near-term affairs between the stars and the colleagues/fans/followings. Also, it is to be noted that these stars live long durations away from home and in their professions, they go thru tremendous levels of stress. These affairs temporarily take the stress away. By the time they realize that these were not waterfronts but only ‘mirages’, someone must have blown the whistle and the entire affairs would get the wash in the press, in the media and as gossip around dinner tables.

Coming back to the clean ambassadorial idols, l’affair de Tiger Woods had broken many hearts, for he had such a clean image among the public. Everyone wanted him to win and lead every course. Such was his image that very sensitive and clean corporates such as Omega Watches used him as its brand Ambassador. But lo and behold, the beans are spilled. It is said that he had not one, many affairs outside his marriage and today we watched the TV news of his wife Elin Nordegren consulting divorce lawyers. No sane person would ever have wished this for the Tiger.

What would happen to those people who, attracted by his clean image, with such empathy, had been praying for him to succeed al the time? He had broken their heart, for sure. Of all people, Tiger would be the last man they thought would fall into such traps.

When the idol falls, what happens? The trust is broken, the beliefs go to dogs and life loses its meaning. What else?

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge Management (KM) is defined as the process of creation, capture, organizing, accessing and using knowledge to create customer/user value.

Knowledge and Information

There is a tendency among people to use the word knowledge and information interchangeably as if they are synonymous. Knowledge consists of Truths & beliefs, perspectives & concepts, judgments & expectations, methodologies & know-how. Knowledge is accumulated, organized, integrated and held over long periods. Information consists of facts, figures and data that are organized to describe a particular situation or problem. From the descriptions, it is very evident that knowledge and Information mean different things, though they are related.

The knowledge is of two types; Tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge.

Tacit knowledge:

Tacit Knowledge not easily visible or expressible and is highly personable. Subjective insights, intuitions, hunches, gut feeling etc form part of tacit knowledge. It is deeply rooted in an individual’s actions and experience.

Explicit knowledge:

Explicit Knowledge is formal and systematic; which can be expressed in words and numbers; which can be easily communicated and shared. Hard data, scientific formulae, patents, codified procedures, universal principle etc forms part of the explicit knowledge.

The interaction between these two forms of knowledge provides the understanding required for knowledge creation, elicitation and capture

Why knowledge management is required in organizations?

In an intense, open, global and dynamic world environment, new ideas and processes are increasingly becoming focal point of competition. Organizations able to reach the users faster more efficiently with products and services that are well matched with the needs of the consumer benefit from competitive advantage. Thus an organization’s ability to learn and innovate faster than the competition may be the greatest sustainable competitive advantage. This underlines the utmost requirement of knowledge management in organizations & companies.

When does it become necessary to have knowledge management in place?

• When the employees leave, what percentage of knowledge of the organization goes out with them?
• How quickly can expertise be assimilated in a new organization?
• How can organizations reap big returns without reinventing the wheel every time?
• When organizations undergo re-structuring, can it be ensured that the knowledge does not disappear with it?
• When expanding the businesses, can it be done without losing the organizational culture, core values, systems & knowledge?

If these questions frequent in the mind, it is proof that organization severely need knowledge management in place.

Knowledge Management Process:

• Create new knowledge
• Capture tacit knowledge in explicit form (make individual knowledge available across organization)
• Organize knowledge (classify, categorize, store, retrieve & maintain knowledge)
• Access knowledge (making knowledge available to the requester)
• Use knowledge (in work activities, decision making and other opportunities)

Role of Information Technology in Knowledge Management:

Information forms an integral component of Knowledge. Therefore, it is essential to understand the usage of technology in the knowledge management practices. Information technology plays a vital role in capturing, organizing and retrieving and sharing knowledge. IT and the digital nervous system (IT hardware, software, connectivity & applications) has come to stay as the real means of information & knowledge creation, capture, managemnt & sharing. Without IT, Information & knowledge manageent would have stayed at its primitive level. A prime example of this case would the Genome project in which DNA structure was revealed in the ‘book of life’ It was all about concurrent and collaborative research happening in laboratories located in almost all continents being accessed and shared by the scientific community in such a fast pace that the whole project got over successfully almost five years before the scheduled time of its end. And what a breakthrough research it was!

Critical Success Factors in Knowledge Management

• Have a knowledge sharing culture in organization
• Have a proper document management system in place
• Have dedicated knowledge people
• Have a measurement system for KM success.

How to measure the success of KM

It is difficult to measure as it is quite new, but look for trends in:

• Reduction in response time to user queries
• Greater clarity of approach in problem solving
• Reduction in normal innovation cycle and thus time to market
• Saving of labour hours
• Saving of Investment

The successful enterprise of tomorrow will be the one having a proper KM network in place and will be able to put knowledge at the frontiers of innovation and customer service

Myths about KM

• KM should be assigned to a separate Department - Untrue, Everyone in the organization must have a responsibility in promoting KM.
• KM means a good information system -Untrue, Information system is just a tool to ensure success of KM. By itself, it is not KM
• Once initiated, KM will happen automatically- Untrue, KM needs continuous monitoring and nurturing.

Benefits of KM

• Reduction of paper handling and error-prone manual processes
• Reduction of paper storage
• Reduction of lost documents
• Faster access to information
• Online access to information that was formerly available only on paper, microfilm etc
• Improved control over documents and document-oriented processes
• Streamlining of time-consuming business processes
• Security over document access and modification
• Provide reliable and accurate audit trail
• Improved tracking and monitoring, with the ability to identify bottlenecks and modify the system to improve efficiency

Knowledge Management - Benifits to India:

• Better quality of technical education and therefore better employability
• Increase in literary rate of the country
• Bringing health facilities to the rural population
• Improving food production and post production efficiency
• Enormous saving in R&D spending
• Improving national and local governance
• Reduction in poverty, child labour and corruption

Conclusion

Knowledge Management emerged as a scientific discipline in early 90s. It was initially supported by only practitioners mostly in industries. Later, the ideas were taken up by academics and the pioneering institutions were Hitotsubashi University, Japan, Babson College & New York University. In 2001, Thomas Stewart, former editor at Fortune Magazine, published a cover story highlighting the importance of intellectual capital of organizations. Since its establishment, the KM discipline has been gradually moving towards academic maturity. The core components of KM include People, Processes, Culture, Structure & Technology. Varied schools of thought on Knowledge management exists today and once the KM discipline reaches academic maturity, we expect these to converge and then we would see highest levels of its proliferation, thereby bringing tremendous benefits and advantages to the practitioners.

CAT IIM 2009 - THE IIM WAY OF MANAGEMENT !

The Common Admission Test (CAT) for entrance into IIMs for MBA, beginning academic year 2009 had really gone into rough weathers with the online Prometric exam going haywire in almost all centres. Central HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had lambasted the way at which the horrible mistakes had been continuing for the past four days and had ordered an enquiry into the whole affair. The Online exam co-ordinating institute, IIM Ahmedabad’s Director Prof. Sameer Barua had accepted that the selection committee had erred in doing the whole process thru Prometric. The COO of Prometric had put the whole blame to some unknown virus. The passing the buck had started. Finally the villain will be the un-known Virus! The story will end there to everyone’s delight and all will live happily ever after. Only in India will such cases pass!

As a person associated in IT industry for close to 3 decades, I am convinced that the problems are not because of virus but due to capability issues of Prometric company. While it is the king in the Online exam sphere, I am sure the company would not have ever done any such mammoth test as CAT in its history. Without self assessing the capability to do, this huge task, to be done within the time frame and without doing any trial run, the company had fallen down due to the incapability of its systems to handle the load. For everything, now there is a virus to blame! As a tech company, Prometric must be ashamed of itself to blame the virus for the fiasco.

There is another animal behind the story and it is NIIT. Its competencies run in training and not in online examinations. I understand that it is NIIT the lead bidder of the case with infrastructure coming from Prometric. The expectation of success is way off the mark and it had been tested at the expense of hapless students.

Now let me tell you my experience. My daughter was a candidate to write CAT 2009. Her centre was SRM University Chennai. I had promised her to visit her at Chennai and take her to the exam centre which I did today. Her test time scheduled was today afternoon. Though the test starts at 3.30 pm, students were advised to report two hours before schedule which we did promptly. Since one has been reading about the difficulties that Prometric was facing from the d day, I have been following newspapers, CAT IIM web site, Prometric Website and their contact points about any change in the exam schedule. Having not seen or heard anything adversary only did I take the train from Cochin to Chennai to take my daughter to the test site.

Little did we anticipate that we were in for trouble! There were three batches of fifty students each to undergo the test. Two batches were admitted and the third batch was asked to wait. Wait they did endlessly. After about two hours, a person by name Albert Joseph, who claimed to be centre in-charge, called these waiting students and told them hat they had earlier sent s m s & email to these students about rescheduling their exams. It was an out and out lie. Had that been the case, the students should have been told so at the time they reported. The fact is that none of the students had received any s m s or email. At quarter to four PM they were asked to leave by being told that they would be informed the new schedule in the due course. Needless to add, my daughter was one of them.

I was standing aside watching the whole show. This person Albert, had no remorse about telling the hapless students to go way and expect for another communication. In fact he was full of arrogance and showing it off on the anxious students who were numb with shock. Just see this, in my daughters case she had bunked the regular studies to attend the test. The centre is located close to fifty kilometers away from the city. The frustrating experience could have added its own negative impact on the mind. I am sure it would be the same with all the affected students. When I went to talk to the centre in-charge, he avoided me totally telling that he has nothing to do with the parents!

Who is bothered in this country? The ministers, the educationalists or the academicians? No one! It is just another fiasco. That’s it. They are so used to such mess-ups. Everyone will simply pass the blame on others.

The famous IIMs again had proven that they are good at theory and not the practice. If they really were good at the practice, they definitely should not have let this happen. And let it continue for four succeeding days! How can anyone decide the whole online thing without ever testing it? The NIIT and the Prometric had over shown its capabilities to misguide the decision makers. Thus the first ever online CAT had turned into a huge failure with aspiring candidates all over the country suffering!

What do we call this fiasco? The ‘IIM way of Management’? You would all laugh I am sure, but I cannot, for I am an affected parent.

USING TECHNOLOGY IN BUSINESS FOR GROWTH & PROFITABILTY

Necessity of a Digital Nervous System (DNS)

With globalization resulting in extremely high competition, organizations are required to meet customer expectations before time, in order to delight them, so as to make the difference. To sustain and grow in the face of competition, today’s companies are required to be very fleet footed to respond to the demands of the market. Therefore, organizations require an infrastructure with built-in intelligence to respond to the market demands, on time. This is achieved through a combination of computers, telecom, software, connectivity and information utility devices. These in fact form the Digital Nervous System (DNS) of the organization. The center of this digital nervous system will be the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. With Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application and Supply Chain Management (SCM) application added to it, it gives the organization the necessary competitive teeth. Equivalent to a biological nervous system, DNS is a digital system built on a combination of hardware, software and connectivity; making it possible to receive a stimuli, process the same and trigger a response at the earliest. It is a digital process linking every aspect of an organization's thought and actions.

Why do Companies require ERP ?

Many corporates have information flow challenges due to lack of an integrated transaction information system in place.

An integrated transaction oriented information systems is concerned with the seamless flow of data among the business functions of the enterprise, resulting into improved administrative and operational efficiency in the organization. The absence of such systems in the enterprise may result in to following business challenges:

* High lead time in business processes
* High cycle time in business transactions
* High Inventory
* Poor utilization of financial resources
* Poor productivity
* High stock out etc.

The planning and control oriented information systems are concerned with improved coordination and collaboration among different business functions enabling enterprise to be more dynamic and intelligent in decision making. The lack of such systems may results into the following business issues:

* Poor utilization of enterprise capacities and resources
* Unsatisfied customers and suppliers
* Unable to handle competitiveness
* Poor flexibility in demand supply management
* Unable to plan growth and future etc.

Functional Modules of ERP Systems

Activities comig under functions of a company consists of functional module. Financial Accounting, Inventory management, Invoicing, HR management, Production planning, Costing, Maintenence management, Sales & distribution, Customer relationship management, Supply chain management etc are the examples of the functional modules. These functional modules are seamlessly integrated in an ERP package. The entire data of all these functional modules reside in a single database engine and therefore the organization does not suffer from data dis-integrity that normally happens due to multiple unconnected databases that normally exist with many functions of a company.

From a user prospective, an ERP package is all about a central database connected to the customer front end through tools (software technology) and rules (standards and benchmarks).

Expected Tangible Benefits of ERP Implementation

· Substantial reduction in Inventory
· Substantial improvement in manpower and machines productivity
· Reduction in financial close cycle
· Improvement in cash management
· Reduction in wastage and improvement in its management
· Reduction in transaction cost of management

Expected Intangible Benefits of ERP Implementation

· Improvement in customer responsiveness
· Improvement in order management
· Improvement in production planning based on forecast received from sales
· Materials planning generated from the system to optimize inventory levels.
· Automation of the import process with item valuation

· Online availability of the inventory and its valuation, leading to visibility of both raw material and finished goods inventory at all stages
· Product wise tracking of costs and revenue with consolidation of financial information
· Integration of cost and financial books, elimination of the need for reconciliation between the two, improves the account transactions.
· Real time tracking of material price and usage variances, efficiency variance.


Points to ponder:

· Automating what is being done manually is not an ERP implementation.
· ERP implementation is all about implementing a centralised application package to use data intelligently to arrive at informed scientific decisions.
· Reputed ERP packages have many global benchmarks & standards (rules) available in it. Applying it intelligently for organization benefits it a lot.
· Please ensure localization (local taxes, statutory rules etc) possibility in the ERP package.
· Please look for ERP packages with concurrent license. Versus named license, concurrent license offers tremendous cost advantage (saves up to 2/3rd of the cost).
· Look for a package which is easy to use.
· Look for a package which does not call for installing an entire new IT hardware infrastructure (saves cost)
· ERP implementation brings tremendous change management in the organization. Please prepare the management and staff through training and orientation to face the changes.
· ERP implementation is achieved through a top down drive approach. If the CEO is not involved in the organizational change management, it could come a cropper.
· A senior officer with the required level of empowerment needs to be made as the responsible co-ordinator of the implementation. He should have easy access to all functions and its heads for smooth ERP implementation.
· Be prepared to experiment by applying global benchmark in your business practices. You could gain tremendously here.
· If it is deemed as a onerous task by the company, go for ERP implementation in phases. Take up easy implementable functional modules first and go for complex functional modules later in phases.
· To phase out the budget, go for minimum concurrent licenses at the beginning and increase the same over the time, as per the requirement. This allows easy investment in phases.

The post is made to advise corporates and organizations on the importance of applying technology within it for being more customer focused, more process oriented and to avail the benefits of incorporating global standards in its business process. Once upon a time, ERP packages stayed only within large multi and transnational corporates those of who availed the rich benefits that it offered. Now it is the turn of the SMEs. SMEs are playing a greater role in the economy of countries. Therefore time has come for the SMEs to implement such technology solutions so as to benefit from it to meet the business objective of growth and profitability. From leveraging IT, companies are today consolidating IT for profitability and growth. Companies that are not leveraged on technology will get pushed aside. It is time the CEOs realized this and go for incorporating appropriate technology solutions for taking his company forward.

OBAMA & NOBEL PRIZE; A CASE OF HOW CAN ONE GETS FIXED

When the news broke out about three days back about the President Barack Obama being chosen as the winner for Nobel Prize for Peace for this year, the first reaction was that of disbelief. It looked like too much too soon. My wife Shali commented; ‘yes, that fixes him’. It was then I ever thought of that perspective.

I had read many books and write ups in the past on how the Nobel committees function. What level of aspirations does it has and how it lets its awards move world opinions and how the award positions people and countries. While from outside it could look like a plain and simple merit based award deliberation, it has to be understood that there is much more to it than that.

Let us come back to Barack Obama. Does he deserve a Nobel Prize for peace? Many comments are still reserved. However suffice to stay that he indeed has the potential of a Nobel Prize winner. His views on peace, liberalism, gender, colour, equity, inclusivity etc are very laudable. After about 8 years of the rule of the Bush Junior, USA had really been tottering on many areas. To add to the agony, there is also the global meltdown that had vanished financial empires and brought the country and its citizens to pits. Most of the above were the result of actions by the yester year’s Republican presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan. Yes, Obama had indeed brought the change initiative and thereby boosting the hope of US citizens.

In the last 9 months of his Presidency in the US, had Obama done all those actions that had resulted in global peace? Say, had he withdrawn the US military from Iraq & Afghanistan and brought peace there? Had he brought permanent truce between Israel and Palestine? Or because of his efforts and pleading, had Al Qaeda and other major guerilla fronts put down its arms? Had he mobilized the war torn refugees of Africa to a better future? Had he made countries including Iran stop its atomic energy/bomb quest? What had he done so as to receive this coveted accolade?

In fact, the current situation is not that rosy for President Obama. Public support for him is dwindling rapidly. From a popularity rating of more than eighty per cent, it is now hovering around the fifties. He still has not been able to address the American health policy and set it right. The American economy has not come back to its original self –in fact it continues to be far from it-

If you had seen him on the TV on the day of him hearing of receiving the Nobel Prize, he himself was shocked. His eyes said that he never expected it. His reactions were that of the same disbelief that you and I had, when we heard the news first!

Unlike other US Presidents and some world leaders of the past, Obama may not have done the behind the scene activities to get the Nobel Prize for Peace. He truly may not have any expectation of the same and was in the midst of the challenges of managing American economy and health policy. His biggest worries would then have been regaining the popularity rating that he had lost. Lo & behold, there falls the Nobel Peace Prize into his hands!

So now let us revert to the intricacies behind the Nobel Prizes. Why had the committee decided to give it way to Obama? Of course it knew that if there is one world leader who can achieve something on the peace front, it is Barack Obama. Though he had not achieved any of the things that he has set forth to achieve in the peace front, the committee would have felt him slowly slipping away from his dreams and commitments towards the same. And when there is nobody around to take the mantle, it would have felt the necessity to bring him back to his commitments in a manner that he cannot escape from it. Yes, the Nobel Committee had fixed Obama with the Nobel Prize. Does he have any option now? He has been set up for good.

Let us watch for the developments to evolve. And let us also see how the Nobel Peace Prize sits on his head. Amen!

WINNING INTELLIGENCE

Several years of working with people gives me a perception that there could be yet another form of intelligence, that can be named ‘Winning Intelligence’. It is based on some simple observations as well as review of scientific research in human behaviour.

During my days of employment, I had come across Ms. Ragini Gupta, a smart, conscientious, industrious and caring girl in the marcom department of the company that I worked. In spite of these qualities, she never got invited to parties and get-togethers conducted by her friends and colleagues. When checked, I was told that Ragini had a ‘fiery temper’ and she was an ‘angry woman’. Nobody wanted to interact with her and be with her. Such a caring an industrious girl but she was alienated by her colleagues because of her occasional ‘fiery temper’

The other day my wife told me the story of her neighbor Anand Menon, a gifted kid, creative and intelligent. He was such a dream child and every mother wanted him to be her son. But late in life, she found Anand making a living out of repairing electrical appliances in his apartments. What happened, she enquired. She was told that Anand snapped when his father walked out of his house before he could complete his school.

In another company there was this brilliant accountant, Ajit Kumar who had an IQ 0f 160+. But whenever promotion came, he was passed over. Because, he was perceived to be a selfish fellow by his colleagues.

These few, out of the easily observable several other instances, denote that inability to manage negative emotions can cause the downfall of people - regardless of learning, knowledge, or intelligence. What we notice in such events around can be verified by review of actual research also.

A study by US Navy had revealed that most effective leaders are warmer, outgoing, emotionally expressive, dramatic and sociable.

Studies in retail segment had found that a store manager’s ability to manage feelings and stress of his sub-ordinates is directly related to net profit, sales per sq ft., sales per employee etc.

A survey on buyers found that apparel sales reps. were valued primarily for their empathy. The buyers reported that they wanted reps that could listen and understand what they wanted.

In a research at insurance major, it was observed those new salesmen who were optimists sold 37% more insurance in their first 2 years than did pessimists. When the company hired a special group of individuals who scored high on optimism but failed the normal screening, they outsold the pessimists by 21% in the first year and 57% in the second year.

Organizations in the selection process usually give high priority to intelligence - in the form of academic brilliance and relayed cognitive and intellectual abilities. These kinds of attributes are not connected to any social and emotional aspects and therefore do not help individuals in managing people - a critical requirement of career progress in organizations.

What is Intelligence?

Out of the several definitions of intelligence, I consider the one by David Wechsler, the American psychologist, the most appropriate one - ‘the aggregate capacity of an individual to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment’. In effect, Wechsler attributed critical importance to ‘cognitive abilities’, though.
Perhaps, Ragini Gupta, Anand Menon, and Ajit Kumar acted purposefully and thought rationally. Yet, they might have missed the component of ‘dealing effectively with the environment’ - and our environment is nothing but other human beings. This ‘dealing effectively with environment’ is the critical requirement of life and work - especially, in the contemporary world of privatized, globalize, open market economy.

How do we manage with our negative emotions?

Taking clue from Wechsler’s definition, it seems that we need to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively - with our own emotions, especially the negative kind.

Acting Purposefully

The properties of negative emotions are powerful enough to block the progress of one’s life and career. It over-shadows even academic brilliance and job performance competencies. Fear, anger, rage, jealousy, frustration, sadness, anxiety, depression etc are some of them. These emotions when taken into the head result in spontaneous, irrational decisions, and actions that mess up one’s life and work.

If an individual has a strong purpose to succeed in life and work, almost any negative emotion is likely to become insignificant. Most of the detrimental emotions are actually reserved for manifestation before other people. If nobody is around, to whom one would demonstrate her emotions? It is likely that the very basis of emotions is created out of certain probabilities of expectations and behaviours vis-à-vis ‘others’.

It is not about direct ‘suppression’ of emotions. Suppressed emotions manifest later in life in the form of health challenges such as migraine, asthma, palpitations, BP, ulcer, arthritis, depression, mental aberrations etc. And these are extremely dangerous for one’s health.Instead, it is about having a ‘purpose’ in life and work, a clarity about one’s role and responsibility if existence. It is reported that a snake and rat would hold on to the same piece of wood floating in flooded water. That is when a common enemy comes, rivals become friends. Similarly, a higher purpose would mitigate the seriousness of self-defeating or ‘other-defeating’ emotions.

Think Rationally

‘Acting purposefully’ involves accepting the existence of others too, to see things and phenomena from the others’ perspective. For instance, nobody gets wild with a drunkard or a mentally challenged individual, even if he injures or intimidates you. Because, you ‘understand’ his condition. It is called ‘empathy’. Empathy makes us understand other’s emotions. This will give us a service orientation to recognize other’s un-stated needs and concerns and also the ability to read undercurrents of emotion and political realities of a group.The choice and decision to act purposefully would naturally inspire us to ‘think rationally’, to become ‘adaptive’, to develop self-initiative, attending to responsibilities, to improve oneself, and in displaying trustworthiness to others. In fact, intelligence is referred to as the ability to ‘adapt with the environment’. Adapting with the environment, as mentioned earlier, is adapting with relationships. Without proper relationships life and work is near-impossible in today’s world than ever before. Adapting with others involves the ability to help the development of others, open communication, resolving conflicts, practicing team work, and by developing leadership abilities.

Nevertheless, it would involve a certain degree of suppression of emotions.
To take the impact of emotions on our body, we must have a healthy body lest the body would be affected and that would result in our health going down. It is therefore important to care for one’s body. Physical fitness can reduce the impact of emotions on the body. To acquire emotional wisdom, keeping the body fit is absolutely important.We should build upon the emotional muscle every day by taking time to focus on emotional experiences. Slowly we should go through the emotions that we feel and by doing so, we must master them. Practicing is the key. It is something similar to swimming. The more you swim and learn, the better the swimmer you are!By opening your heart to others, you can apply empathy in social interactions. Forever, create an attitude of gratitude in you. We should be thankful to the world and its inhabitants for making our life worth living.ConclusionThus, we may try to re-conceptualize Wechsler’s definition of intelligence: ‘the aggregate capacity of an individual to act purposefully, think rationally, “in order to deal effectively with the environment of people”.

The very purpose of intelligence itself is to facilitate survival and sustenance. Unfortunately, the very activities of survival and sustenance have assumed a high-competition ‘game’. Perhaps, an inevitable consequence of the very intelligence of human beings. The process of learning and knowledge development is a matter of conventional intelligence. But in order to take advantage or to reap the benefits of that learning and knowledge, we need yet another ‘orientation’ to intelligence. An intelligence to win our purpose. Of courses, it is not about defeating others. At least to ‘win over our own emotions’ that tend to defeat our own purposes - great or simple.

A VISIT TO ROME - THE ANCIENT EUROPEAN POWER CENTRE

As a part of the incentive conference organized by our principals M/s. Toshiba Corporation, I could visit Rome for about 4 days during the first week of September 2009. Though we could have flown directly to Rome from Mumbai, due to negotiated rates, the travel was by Swiss Air that took us to Zurich first and then to Rome, thereby adding a minimum of two and half hours of travel time, and by increasing our travel weariness to that extent.

Having read a lot about Rome & Vatican and seen many movies and TV programs on the same, one was very happy and anxious to see Rome which was the seat of art, literature and culture of the entire ancient and medieval Europe. This is not to speak about the territorial control that Rome exerted on almost the entire south west Europe and northern Africa that was touching the Mediterranean Sea during the time.

It was in the end of summer that we landed at the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport of Rome in the morning. We haven’t noticed any Swine flu precautions in the airport. People moved around freely and it was next to impossible to find anyone with a mask on his face. Everyone of us (since all of us were of the male variety – coming from sex starved conservative India) had our eyes fixed on the upper portion of the female anatomy of the travelers as it was found to be abundantly open and bouncing around non-challengingly. It was a treat every one enjoyed albeit the shame that it carried. The westerners dress that way and they have no qualms about it. It is their style, it is their culture! Who are we to question? So we did the best; we simply enjoyed the sight of it.

Rome is a city where everyone in spite of gender, smokes plenty.

As we drove to the city from the Airport, the first thing that hit us was the spread of the city with lots of space around the buildings. Also, the buildings were not that very tall. In the modern part of the city the height must have gone up to 12 floors whereas at an average, the buildings were 4 to 5 floor tall. These buildings have lots of area around it. To an outsider, this gives a sense of peace that was delivered by the space.

Our guide very proudly announced that Rome was the largest city of the ancient world with a living population of more than a million even during the end of B.C. That was very interesting news. An active metropolis two millennium back, Rome would have been such a place that gave earning to the entire European populace to come down and settle there. There had been plenty of stories of the bewitching Mediterranean weather that had attracted a bevy of people to cities and towns located on its shores.

The roads are very good but traffic jams are a usual sight. Unlike India, the jams do not result in things to come to a grinding halt. Even in jams, the traffic moves. The city has very good transport systems. It has buses, trains, trams and taxis plying in it, the taxis are very expensive though. Another observation that hit one as he travels into the city was the size of the cars. Almost ninety percent of cars were the ‘hatch back’ types and not the sedan models. Secondly, small cars are plenty. One saw the two door two seater car called SMART in abundance. Manufactured by Merced Benz, this car, while it is so small, is an extremely modern driving device giving excellent driving comfort. Smart is an acronym for Swatch Mercedes ART. The cost of the SMART car is about twelve thousand Euros and that comes to above INR eight lakhs. The perennial traffic jams must have driven the Italian car designers to make hatch back and small cars rather than the Sedan models that we see all around the world. Most of the cars are European models with Italy’s own Fiat & Alpha Romeo in good numbers. I could see very less percentage of Japanese cars in Rome. It is commonly said that Romans are the worst among European drivers, but I found them very modest when compared to the Indian drivers. One could also see plenty of two wheelers, particularly scooters. Italy is the birth place of Vespa and Piaggio; two of the world’s oldest two wheeler companies.

We stayed at the Sheraton Roma. Ours hosts Toshiba knew about the unpalatability of Italian food for an Indian and hence through an internal arrangement with the hotel, could get Indian foods served to us with the help of the Maharaja Hotel owned by an enterprising Punjabi in Rome. We had continental breakfast every day and only on the final day, an Italian dinner, which most of us ate very little.

On the first day evening we went for the city tour and saw the famous Colosseum from outside. It is indeed is a huge structure! It is now featured as one of the seven wonders of the word through an Internet pole. Built in eight years and inaugurated in AD 80, The Colosseum was constructed as an amphitheatre to be used for entertainment in those days. In the morning hours the show was that of the beasts whereas in the afternoon, the Gladiators performed in it. It could accommodate between sixty and eighty thousand people in the stands. The shows were free but there were tickets meant for audience that were based on their social status. The shows were very wild and violent with beasts and men killing each other, enjoyed by the audience that included the emperors, aristocrats and the commons. Perhaps it was an aggressively violent society that indulged in killing and arson aplenty. The very thought gave me cold shudders! Adjoining the Colosseum, there were the ruins of the stadium where charioting contests were performed. Though there are only very few remnants left, this stadium could accommodate about two hundred thousand people! By any measure, it must have been truly grand. Around the Colosseum is the old city which actually a walled city. The buildings were neatly constructed and the roads had very good geometry which I found very impressive. Rome was originally built on seven hills and the emperors and the aristocrats stayed in the palatine hills which was located at the centre of other six hills. Another attraction was the still standing ruins of the huge Sauna bathing systems built in ancient times for the people to take bath and indulge in swimming etc. Very imposing construction it is! Drawing water through it could have been the ancient engineering feat!

To Indians, Rome is a costly city. Though we were taken to huge shopping arcades, the purchases were very limited. Leather and Shoes are good attraction for shoppers in Italy.
The second day was fully spent ion conferencing. There were plenty of interactive sessions. It looks like Toshiba India had taken a large target for the coming years and they made us work hard to arrive at strategies that could help them meet the numbers. Good, the more; the merrier. The day ended up in Gala Dinner with Belly dancers and tap dancers entertaining us. Just before our Punjabi crowd among us started getting into their dancing shoes, I went to sleep.


The next two days had been sight seeing only. We went to the Colosseum again to see the inside. I must tell you it is huge imposing structure where everything was thought of (Like how to bringing in the beasts, using lifts to lower them into dungeons to be released just before the show. Like making canopy with the leather shade at the top so that the sun doesn’t disturb the audience sitting on the top. Truly innovative designs of the then times!)

I had interesting conversations with our guide. Though it was Greece that started democracy in ancient Europe, it was in Rome it grew visibly in large size. Soon after the Roman Kingdom that existed between eighth century and sixth century BC, from BC 508 till BC 27, Rome had sustained democracy and it was called Roman Republic. From 27 BC, Rome went on to become an Empire that was started by Julius Caesar and consolidated by Augustus Caesar & Ocatvius Caesar. However there had been instances of the common man becoming Emperor in Rome (It is not like the blood lineage as we see in Mughal dynasty etc). For instance, the builder of the Colosseum, Emperor Vespasius did not come from any aristocracy and he was called, in the then terms, a Novus Homo (new man - the first in his family to serve the Roman government). All through these period (Kingdom, Republic and Empire) Rome was growing and it went on to occupy more than half of Europe, lots of Africa, including some parts of Asia (mainly the Middle East; Syria, Baghdad etc). In the nineteenth century, it was King Victor Emmanuel II who unified the kingdoms of Italy and assumed the title ‘King of Italy’ on 18 February 1861. We could see huge edifices built by these men & kings of the past.

St. Peter who was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ who arrived in Rome in the early part of the First century AD with an intention to spread the teachings of Christ. He stayed in Rome and tried but was not accepted by the then Empire Nero and was crucified upside down by the King’s men in AD 64. In spreading Christianity in Europe, beginning from Rome, another saint; St. Paul assisted St Peter. Later St. Paul was beheaded for indulging in acts unworthy of a Roman Citizen who used to worship Gods such as Venus, Jupiter etc and of course the Emperor. Though not allowed, Christianity was spreading all over the empire but only in in fourth Century AD through a promulgation, the then Roman King; Constantine I allowed religious freedom that helped Christianity grow visibly in the Kingdom. And soon after that, Roman kingdom embraced Christianity.

Wherever St. Peter was buried, a Church was constructed and it became the pilgrim centre for the Christians. Today the City state of Vatican where St. Peter’s church is situated is the head quarters of the Catholic Christians (the largest in number among Christianity) of the world, headed by the Pope. Among Catholics, St. Peter is officially accorded the status as the first Pope. Vatican is a walled city inside Rome. It has a population of about eight thousand and the beauty is that all its citizens are unmarried.

We visited the museum, the Sistine Chapel and the St Peters Basilica in Vatican. The museum was good but it is the Sistine chapel that is the main attraction. The chapel is a personal church of the Pope, where the great artists of the Renaissance period had contributed immensely by painting its walls and ceilings. While all of them were famous and considered the best in their trade, it was Michael Angelo who did the most prominent paintings. Initially he painted the ceiling for about 4 years of which the creation of Adam by the God is considered to be the best. The iconic image of the Hand of God giving life to Adam is now being reproduced in countless imitations across the world. Here his series of nine paintings shows God's Creation of the World, God's Relationship with Mankind, and Mankind's fall from God's Grace.

Three decades later Michael Angelo painted the largest wall of the Sistine chapel. It was the ‘Last Judgment’. The Last Judgment is a depiction of the second coming of Christ. The souls of humans rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ surrounded by his saints. It is said that Michael Angelo was not happy to do the job and he was pressurized by the Cardinal to so. Therefore, he painted the last judgment with Jesus, Mary and the saints all naked. Years later the genitalia in the fresco were covered by another artist. Officially Michael Angelo was a sculptor and not a painter. He wasn’t happy to do the painting and was cajoled to do so; however whatever he had created is the master piece of the world. Every day Sistine chapel is visited by an average of fifteen thousand people to see the great painting on the ceiling and the wall. The world will never forget Michael Angelo.

In the year 1995 the painting of Michael Angelo underwent cleaning. Since it was sponsored by a publishing house they had got a ban order from the Pope on photographing the paintings so that they could make good the money spent by selling the reproductions themselves. This is the commercialism of the divinity!

After you come out of the Chapel, you go to see the most famous St Peters Church. It indeed is a huge edifice. It is said the St Peter’s church has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world. It is a marvelous building. The construction of the present basilica was started in the year 1506 and was completed on November 1626, after demolishing the original Church that was built in the fourth century. The altar is built over the burial pit of St. Peter. The dome of the basilica is the most dominant feature of the skyline of Rome. As said, it is the largest church and covers an area of 5.7 acres with a capacity to accommodate over 60,000 people. Undoubtedly, St Peters basilica is one of the holiest sites of Christendom of the Catholic tradition. What is interesting to note here also is the fact that Michael Angelo was deeply involved in the architecture of the Basilica!

Once you come outside the basilica, it is the huge St. Peters square before you. Saint Peter's Square is located directly in front of St. Peters Basilica and it is a huge area that can accommodate more than three hundred thousand people. During special occasions such as Christmas, Easter etc, the place will be filled with devotees from all over the world to pray and get the direct blessings from the Pope.

Standing on the top of the façade of the St. Peters basilica, one would get a complete view of not only the square but also the receding skyline of Rome and it said to be one of the most enchanting sights.

We did a lot of walking around Vatican and Rome during the four days. It has been a gratifying moment to visit one of the most historic cities of the world and see the huge edifices that stood the test of time, that represented the Monarchy, Oligarchy and of course, Autocracy. The disintegration Rome saw the rise of Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire and Arab Islamic Empire. Come to think of it, Rome had been the inspiration of other Empires that came after it. To see such an ancient powerful historic place, people flock to it. So, one of the most important revenue earners of the country is tourism. As we have seen allover the world, whether it is Kerala, India or Saudi Arabia, spirituality combines very well with tourism in making money and Rome is no exception.