" Either Or " v/s "As well as"

Once Guru Nanak Dev Ji, in his childhood, was playing in his courtyard, suddenly he fell down. Both Pandit (Hindu) and Muslim learned man, who were standing beside him, extended their one hand each to help him. To know Guru Nanak Dev Ji's religious inclination, they decided that whichever hand will he (Guru Nanak Dev Ji) use for getting up, he will follow that religion means if child use Pandit hand for support then child follows Hindu religion and vice versa. To their surprise, Guru Nanak Dev Ji used both men's hand for support.
                            This small secular story,taught in school, guided my religious bent of mind and i ended up being a Universalist Unitarian. Looking above story from different angle (besides religion), Guru Nanak Dev Ji could either chose Hindu hand or Muslim hand but he chose hindu's as well as Muslim's hand. This fact triggered another set of questions and dilemma of choosing between "Either Or " and "As well as" for me. I observed the application of this fact in day to day decision making situations and started evaluating situations based on this fact. Some of my observations are:

1. In childhood, its been often asked that whom do you like the most, mom or dad ?
Immediate answer for above question would have, Mom as well as Dad. But generally question is asked by a biased person, so i first judge the bias of person who is asking question and then answer accordingly. For ex. if my brother asks, then i recall that dad scold him while teaching, so he must not like dad, and i answer in Mom's favour to keep him happy so that he keeps me happy and take me for long drive along with him :).(Thank God !! My brother doesn't read blogs :)). So i ended up choosing either dad or mom rather than Mom as well as Dad. In other words i graduated from lebel "Bachhe man ke sache" to lebel "Duniyadari sikhna"

2. In school days, most of us are often in dilemma of whether to concentrate on studies or sports ?
So we needed to choose either studies or sports. We sometimes wondered how some students , All Rounders ,  manage to do well in sports as well as studies. But due to shortage of time we even stop wondering and select the appropriate option (sport in case of Sachin Tendulkar !!).

 3. As a working individual, we often face dilemma between earning money and family life and this is called as work life balance. Most of us think if we want money in life then we have to sactifice family life / hobbies. If somebody is pursuing some hobbies or enjoying family life, we unconciously think that he is not focussed on career and not going to be too rich or succesful. Are we conditioned from childhood to think like this ? Can't we believe or atleast imagine that a person can be a rich in money and other aspects of life ( a real rich). People have done that, read about Richard Branson...

 4. There can be many more such examples that we can think of, now i have option of either continuing with examples or move ahead. Due to shortage of time i choose to move ahead :).

              
                

Dancing Manager

                         Dance has always been my passion from childhood. I used to copy dancing steps of Salman khan (O O Jaane jana), Hrithik Roshan (Ek pal ka jeena) and others. As i started earning in my corporate working life, i was sure to give oxygen to that fire of passion. But I sensed an unwritten archaic perception among senior managers that dancing and other such activities are wastage of time. Instead young employees should work on weekends (so that bosses can enjoy on weekdays also :) ) , for the so called better learning and growth opportunities. Being amateur, i took my seniors advice for granted and participated in rat race.

                          As i started gaining experience in corporate life, i observed that normal corporate working is mainly about management. You need to be smart manager rather than being intelligent scientist. After a lot of reading and attending seminars on management, i conclude that basic building block for management is about dealing with people. All other management concepts are made by using this building block. Each individual has his/her own way of using this block which makes different styles of manangement.

                          With this understanding of management and the belief in horizontal deployment of learning, i decided to learn something related to dealing with people besides office work. Being childhood passion, dance was the obvious choice. Keeping marriagable age into consideration, i chose couple dance (SALSA & other latin american dances) as it would help me in getting experience of most difficult work i.e Understanding women. I thought i will kill three birds viz. learning management, following passion and understanding women, with one shot.

                         While learning dance, i observed the relation between dance and management. We have group dance performance in which all the couples in group need to be synchronised. So first we need to be in sync with our partner and then couple need to be in sync with other couples in group. It is analogous to manufacturing plant, as first we need to be in sync within our department and then individual department need to be in sync with other departments for achiveing the common goal. In dance, one needs to have good friendly relation with partner because if your partner doesn't like you then she will not like dancing with you. This can lead to lack of interest and passion and will result in out of sync performance. Eventually whole performance will be affected although all other couples are doing fine. Similarly in office, rift betwen two employees will result in inefficiency of one department which becomes the bottleneck for whole plant. Eventually whole plant becomes in efficient.

            Keeping these analogies in view, my belief of horizontal deployment of learning got stronger.
While doing our Constitutional  fundamental duty of developing Scientific temper, we should challenge stereotypical thinking and should accept things only on the basis of personal experiements and experience. I started by becoming a DANCING MANAGER.. What about you ?