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The symbolism of Siva Nataraja is religion, art and science merged as one. In God's endless dance of creation, preservation, destruction and paired graces is hidden a deep understanding of our universe. Aum Namah Sivaya. Bhashya Nataraja, the King of Dance, has four arms. The upper right hand holds the drum from which creation issues forth. The lower right hand is raised in blessing, betokening preservation. The upper left hand holds a flame, which is destruction, the dissolution of form. The right leg, representing obscuring grace, stands upon Apasmarapurusha, a soul temporarily earth-bound by its own sloth, confusion and forgetfulness. The uplifted left leg is revealing grace, which releases the mature soul from bondage. The lower left hand gestures toward that holy foot in assurance that Siva's grace is the refuge for everyone, the way to liberation. The circle of fire represents the cosmos and especially consciousness. The all-devouring form looming above is Mahakala, "Great Time." The cobra around Nataraja's waist is kundalini shakti, the soul-impelling cosmic power resident within all. Nataraja's dance is not just a symbol. It is taking place within each of us, at the atomic level, this very moment. The Agamas proclaim, "The birth of the world, its maintenance, its destruction, the soul's obscuration and liberation are the five acts of His dance." Aum Namah Sivaya. Shiva's unkempt hair, a symbol of a rejection of society, shows him to be an ascetic. This contrasts with his role as a grhastha, or householder, with his wife and family.
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1st verse
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Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha Om
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Jaya Ganesha Jaya Ganesha Jaya Ganesha Om
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Jaya Ganesha Jaya Ganesha Jaya Ganesha Om
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Son of Shiva & Parvati / with an elephants head and a fat belly
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Son of Shiva & Parvati / with an elephants head and a fat belly
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Son of Shiva & Parvati / with an elephants head and a fat belly
Enjoy !
Namaste !
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Be the change that you wanna see / in the world, just like Gandhi
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Be the change that you wanna see / in the world, just like Gandhi
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- Harmony helps. Smooth interaction among collaborators avoids time-wasting debates about how best to proceed. Actually: Quite the opposite, research shows. Conflict, when well managed and focused on a team’s objectives, can generate more creative solutions than one sees in conflict-free groups. So long as it is about the work itself, disagreements can be good for a team.
- It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior. Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.
- Teamwork is magical. To harvest its many benefits,
all one has to do is gather up some really talented people and tell
them in general terms what is needed–the team will work out the details. Actually: It takes careful thought and no small about amount of preparation to stack the deck for success. The best leaders provide a clear statement of just what the team is to accomplish, and they make sure that the team has all the resources and supports it will need to succeed.(For full report, you can get it from Harvard Business Review)
- It all depends on the leader. Think of a team you have led, or on which you have served, that performed superbly. Now think of another one that did quite poorly. What accounts for the difference between them? If you are like most people, your explanation will have something to do with the personality, behavior, or style of the leaders of those two teams.
Actually: The hands-on activities of group leaders do make a difference. But the most powerful thing a leader can do to foster effective collaboration is to create conditions that help members competently manage themselves. The second most powerful thing is to launch the team well. And then, third, is the hands-on teaching and coaching that leaders do after the work is underway. Our research suggests that condition-creating accounts for about 60% of the variation in how well a team eventually performs; that the quality of the team launch accounts for another 30%; and that real-time coaching accounts for only about 10%. Leaders are indeed important in collaborative work, but not in the ways we usually think.
- Teamwork is magical. To harvest its many benefits, all one has to do is gather up some really talented people and tell them in general terms what is needed--the team will work out the details.
Actually: It takes careful thought and no small about amount of preparation to stack the deck for success. The best leaders provide a clear statement of just what the team is to accomplish, and they make sure that the team has all the resources and supports it will need to succeed. Although you may have to do a bit of political maneuvering to get what is needed for effective collaboration from the broader organization, it is well worth the trouble.
- Face-to-face interaction is passé. Now that we have powerful electronic technologies for communication and coordination, teams can do their work much more efficiently at a distance.
Actually: Teams working remotely are at a considerable disadvantage. There really are benefits to sizing up your teammates face-to-face. A number of organizations that rely heavily on distributed teams have found that it is well worth the time and expense to get members together when the team is launched, again around the midpoint of the team's work, and yet again when the work has been completed.
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Christy Turlington
Everywhere else, Americans rush from their high-pressure jobs and tune in to the authoritatively mellow voice of an instructor, gently urging them to solder a union (the literal translation of the Sanskrit word yoga) between mind and body. These Type A strivers want to become Type B seekers, to lose their blues in an asana (pose), to graduate from distress to de-stress. Fifteen million Americans include some form of yoga in their fitness regimen — twice as many as did five years ago; 75% of all U.S. health clubs offer yoga classes. Many in those classes are looking not inward but behind. As supermodel Christy Turlington, a serious practitioner, says, "Some of my friends simply want to have a yoga butt." But others come to the discipline in hopes of restoring their troubled bodies. Yoga makes me feel better, they say. Maybe it can cure what ails me.
Oprah Winfrey, arbiter of moral and literary betterment for millions of American women, devoted a whole show to the benefits of yoga earlier this month, with guest appearances by Turlington and stud-muffin guru Rodney Yee. Testimonials from everyday yogis and
yoginis clogged the hour: I lost weight; I quit smoking; I conquered my fear of flying; I can sleep again; it saved my marriage; it improved my daughter's grades and attitude. "We are more centered as a team," declared the El Monte Firefighters of Los Altos Hills, Calif.
Sounds great. Namaste, as your instructor says at the end of a session:
the divine in me bows to the divine in you. But let's up the ante a bit. Is yoga more than the power of positive breathing? Can it, say, cure cancer? Fend off heart attacks? Rejuvenate post-menopausal women? Just as important for yoga's application by mainstream doctors, can its presumed benefits be measured by conventional medical standards? Is yoga, in other words, a science ?
By even asking the question, we provoke a clash of two powerful cultures, two very different ways of looking at the world. The Indian tradition develops metaphors and ways of describing the body (life forces, energy centers) as it is experienced, from the inside out. The Western tradition looks at the body from the outside in, peeling it back one layer at a time, believing only what it can see, measure and prove in randomized, double-blind tests. The East treats the person; the West treats the disease. "Our system of medicine is very fragmented," says Dr. Carrie Demers, who runs the Center for Health and Healing at the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of the USA in Honesdale, Pa. "We send you to different
specialists to look at different parts of you. Yoga is more holistic; it's interested in the integration of body, breath and mind."
The few controlled studies that have been done offer cause for hope. A 1990 study of patients who had coronary heart disease indicated that a regimen of aerobic exercise and stress reduction, including yoga, combined with a low-fat vegetarian diet, stabilized and in some cases
reversed arterial blockage. The author Dr. Dean Ornish is in the midst of a study involving men with prostate cancer. Can diet, yoga and meditation affect the progress of this disease? So far, Ornish will say only that the data are encouraging.
To the skeptic, all evidence is anecdotal. But some anecdotes are more than encouraging; they are inspiring. Consider Sue Cohen, 54, an accountant, breast-cancer survivor and five-year yoga student at the Unity Woods studio in Bethesda, Md. "After my cancer surgery," Cohen
says, "I thought I might never lift my arm again. Then here I am one day, standing on my head, leaning most of my 125-lb. body weight on that arm I thought I'd never be able to use again. Chemotherapy, surgery and some medications can rob you of mental acuity, but yoga
helps compensate for the loss. It impels you to do things you never thought you were capable of doing."
A series of exercises as old as the Sphinx could prove to be the medical miracle of tomorrow — or just wishful thinking from the millions who have embraced yoga in a bit more than a generation.
Yoga was little known in the U.S. — perhaps only as an enthusiasm of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other icons of the Beat Generation — when the Beatles and Mia Farrow journeyed to India to sit at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968. Since then, yoga has endured more evolutions of popular consciousness than a morphing movie monster.
First it signaled spiritual cleansing and rebirth, a nontoxic way to get high. Then it was seen as a kind of preventive medicine that helped manage and reduce stress. "The third wave was the fitness wave," says Richard Faulds, president of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in
Lenox, Mass. "And that's about strength and flexibility and endurance."
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a) go to the gym?
b) jog around your suburban or urban neighborhood?c) walk, run or bike through a local park or reservation?
I do B, but apparently I’d be smarter (literally) if I did C. A growing body of research is looking at the benefits of being in natureand finding that exposure to the great outdoors improves cognitivefunction. Experts have called it ecopsychology or attention restoration therapy.The performance on the memory and attention task greatly improved following the walk in the park, but did not improve in those who walked downtown.
Why nature makes you smarterBeing in nature exposes you to soothing stimuli that engages your involuntary attention, giving your directed-attention a rest and a chance to become rejuvenated. When you are in a city, you are constantly vigilant, your directed-attention is turned on. The authors
write:
Richard Luov coined the term “nature deficit disorder” to describe a condition of being so out of touch with nature that we lose humility, our spirituality, our humanity and we also are
at higher risk of obesity, depression and other ailments. His first book, Last Child in the Woods, was about the negative effects of a nature deficit on children, but his new book, The Nature Principle, describes how adults are equally at risk of being estranged from nature.
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LAST weekend, while delivering an action-learning programme, I showed a video of two teams playing basketball. When I asked the class to count the number of passes being made by the teams, they all got the right answer. But no one spotted this big gorilla that walked into the court and danced for a good portion of the game.
These past few decades, we have witnessed numerous companies at the top of their industry get dispatched by unknowns from nowhere. Motorola, the ruler of cellular telephone, missed the shift to digital and was displaced by Nokia, a Finnish company producing snow tires and rubber boots a decade before they conquered cellular wireless. IBM, kings of the computing age, completely missed the PC revolution and was overtaken by Microsoft, Dell and a host of small start-ups.
At the same time, innovative companies were replaced by others that just copied. Xerox invented the photocopiers but Canon took it to a whole new level with the colour copier. Ford and GM had automobile leadership for years till the Japanese copycats came in with their high value economic cars and wiped them out. Why do all these companies get dethroned?
In recent times, the richest economy in the 16th century was Spain but within 150 years it became one of the poorest in Europe. Spain became more and more internally focused, moving from an open to a closed economy. A civil war, combined with its close-door policy, cost Spain its position of power.
Like Spain, many organisations similarly fall. Companies that close itself to the world and focus internally may miss the boat when change occurs. Just as Motorola missed the jump to digital, and IBM missed the PC revolution, organizations that stop looking outside, lose their way.
It’s the same in our personal lives. We are so busy in our work, our kids, our schedules and meetings, that we sometimes miss important changes that are taking place around us.
I recall a friend’s mother working as a secretary in the 1970s who was a great on the typewriter. But when computers made their debut in the 80s, she was made redundant and replaced by a savvier computer user. Companies face the same dilemma. When they are so busy with their internal operations and processes, they lose sight of the world and are soon replaced by new companies.
Just think of the products and services you use today. How many of these products are from companies that existed 15 years ago? We fly on AirAsia, buy furniture from IKEA, buy our computers from Dell, drink coffee at Starbucks, search for information via Google and we get leadership training from Leaderonomics!
Having a company byline that includes “established 1850” is almost a liability today. Reputation counts for nothing anymore. Shell has a home base in the UK and has a reputation as a producer of high-quality petrol. Yet, in its UK home market, the biggest petrol retailer is Tesco, a supermarket.
So, how do these companies lose their leadership positions?
One reason may be “social proof”, a theory developed by psychologist Robert Cialdini. The larger a crowd of people at the scene of an accident, the more likely no one will help the victims. If everyone is passive, everyone thinks that there is no emergency. Cialdini theory claims, “If a lot of people are doing the same thing, they must know something we don’t.”
Companies foolishly adopt this “follow-the-leader” attitude. Wang Laboratories, which established itself as a major computer force in the 80s, decided to follow industry leader IBM and forewent the PC market. Today it does not exist.
Another reason, asserts Charan and Useem, is that “a number of studies show that people are less likely to make optimal decisions after prolonged periods of success. Enron, Lucent, WorldCom – all had reached the mountaintop before they ran into trouble. Someone should have told them that most mountaineering accidents happen on the way down.”
Gary Hamel adds: “The seeds of failure are usually sown at the heights of greatness.” Once a company becomes an industry leader, defensive thinking seeps in and no one challenges the status quo. Many become insular and inward-looking. And miss changes taking place, becoming irrelevant to their customers.
Great leaders are always forward-looking and not basking in past glories or caught up in internal issues. Bill Gates constantly says “Microsoft is always two years away from failure.” Gates understands the need to be engaged with the world, its trends and market changes.
Intel is a great example of a company reinventing itself. Andrew Grove writes in Only the Paranoid Survive about how Intel faced competition from South Korea and Japan, which turned memory chips into cheap commodities. Intel quickly decided to exit the memory business entirely and become a maker of microprocessors. Grove came to this insight when he looked outside Intel and asked himself, “If I got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would the new CEO do?” The answer was clear: Focus on our strengths – high tech, and get rid of memory chips.
There were many internal Intel issues but Grove knew if he continued to play the same game, he would soon be another fallen giant. He observed that high-tech microprocessors had a premium and he had a stable of scientists which he could deploy into that space. His worldview enabled Intel to remain a giant, albeit in a different product line.
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, writes: “The key sign – the litmus test – is whether you begin to explain away the brutal facts rather than to confront the brutal facts head-on.” By forcing himself to see from the outside, Grove recognised the brutal facts facing him and made the necessary change.
So what lessons can we draw from these stories?
Firstly, change happens all the time. That is not anything to be paranoid about. What we need to be vigilant about is to always be observing what is happening from the outside in. And it’s not just about in your industry but changes everywhere. Book retailers never quite understood how Amazon.com suddenly appeared and wiped them out as no one tracked the Internet revolution.
Secondly, we need to be wary when we start becoming so internally focused and consumed by tasks and to-do lists. Great leaders learn to reflect and take time off to notice the “dancing gorillas” that walk into their lives.
Finally, watch out when you become defensive and reactionary. This is the starting point of your fall from the mountaintop. Great leaders that stay at the top for long periods are usually ones who have humbled themselves to believe that learning and growth never end.
Back to my gorilla video – whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, take some time to be still and mindful of the changes that are taking place. There are many big gorillas walking into your industry and workplace and if you are too busy “counting passes” inside your organisation, the gorilla may just consume you and make you an irrelevant dinosaur.
Roshan Thiran is currently CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise focused on inspiring people to leadership greatness. Join his journey and become a fan of Leaderonomics and DIODE Camps at www.leaderonomics.com
Notes: Perseverance - commitment, hard work, patience, endurance
Leadership Lessons from Steve Jobs
“I want to put a dent in the universe” – Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
A few weeks ago, I received a book from publisher McGraw-Hill on Steve Jobs by communications coach Carmine Gallo. I started recollecting the “Think Different” Apple ad campaign. The ad was the starting point in Steve Job’s revival of a company he founded, was fired from and later brought back to turnaround. The ad was memorable because it was essentially about Steve Job’s leadership and his desire to “change the world.” The copy of the ad, read by Richard Dreyfuss, goes like this:
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. And the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.”
This campaign featured Thomas Edison, Einstein, Gandhi, Amelia Earheart and other Apple heroes. Steve explained that “you can tell a lot about a person by who his or her heroes are” and his role models were people who “changed the world“.
Steven Paul Jobs has become “the most successful CEO today” according to Jack Welch, reshaping the computer, entertainment, music, telecommunications and the book industries.
Born to Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian, he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs who promised his biological parents that they would send Steve to college. Steve did go to Reed College but dropped out after one semester.
Although dropping out, he continued attending classes he was passionate about. He worked briefly at Hewlett-Packard meeting Steve Wozniak, who would later co-found Apple with him, then took a job with Atari to save money to go to India to “find himself”.
He travelled to India and came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. Steve began that trip wanting to “change the world” but he did not know how. During his time in India, he realised that “maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx or Neem Karolie Baba put together.” Steve’s trip to convinced him that his Indiapurpose on earth was “to put a dent in the universe through ”innovation like his great role model Thomas Edison.
Studying Steve’s leadership, I uncovered that he, like Mandela, Gandhi, Napoleon, Jack Welch and other great leaders, all began their leadership journey in silent retreat ‘finding themselves and their passion‘. In fact, interestingly, I found 6 key steps which enabled all great leaders across time to “put a dent in the universe”. The steps are as follows:
1. Take Time to be with yourself to know yourself and find out what you truly love to do and what drives you
2. Define your vision of a better tomorrow and redefine it till the vision excites you
3. Sell and excite the world with the message of your vision
4. Build a plan of execution to achieve this vision, including the mobilisation of people to ensure the vision becomes a reality
5. Say “NO” to distractions and focus relentlessly on achieving the vision
6. Execute! Execute! Execute! and keep executing flawlessly with high quality overcoming obstacles that come your way
Finding Yourself & Your Passion
Steve Jobs dropped out of college, disappointing his parents in the process. But he was always curious claiming, “the minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.” He attended a calligraphy class because he was passionate about typefaces even though he knew that this class had no “hope of any practical application in my life.” Yet ten years later, this calligraphy class was the reason that the Macintosh had beautiful typography.
Steve believes his philosophy of following his heart is a key part of leadership adding “you must have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
Then Steve went to India spending time with the surroundings and the Creator discovering his “calling.” In fact, when Steve in an interview with the Smithsonian postulates:
“I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you are really passionate about. I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure PERSEVERANCE. It is so hard. There are such rough moments that I think most people give up. Unless you have a lot of passion, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give up. So, you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you are passionate about, otherwise you are not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that’s half the battle right there.”
And he is right. You have got to find what you love and are passionate about first.
Define your vision of a better tomorrow
Steve always sees a future with possibilities. He looks beyond today and sees something better in everything. He saw computers as much more than dreary productivity tools. He saw the MP3 player as more than a Walkman.
On the iPhone, he remarked, “”We all had cellphones. We just hated them, they were so awful to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn’t very good, ” and so he challenged his team, “Let’s make a great phone that we fall in love with. We’re going to do it. Let’s try.’ It was the same with the iPad. Steve had a way of seeing a greater future.
In Gallo’s book, he cites a story where Steve was recruiting a top talent to Apple 30 years ago. This talent asked, “What is your vision for the personal computer?” For the next hour, Steve painted a picture of how personal computers were going to change the world. He weaved his vision of how it would change everything from work, education, entertainment and everything. After hearing Steve’s vision, he immediately signed up to work at Apple, a small startup then.
Great leaders have vision. According to former Apple leader Trip Hawkins, “Steve has the power of vision that is almost frightening. When Steve believes in something, the power of that vision can literally sweep aside any objections or problems.”
Articulate the Vision
One of the key leadership lessons Steve internalised is the CEO’s role as company evangelist and vision spokesperson. Leaders can dream big visions but can they articulate that vision ensuring it’s appealing, vibrant, and gripping?
How does Steve message his vision so perfectly? Firstly, he is passionate about the vision and his energy flows from this passion. More importantly, he spends hours practicing and preparing ensuring his vision is fully understood. A BusinessWeek week article notes that Steve’s articulation of his vision “comes only after grueling hours of practice.” And he communicates by simply allowing you to visualise the vision. Most leaders have visions but the problem is they don’t communicate that vision effectively.
Mobilising People to Execute the Vision
A big part about Steve’s leadership is his ability to hire people who are “inspired to make the dream a reality” (Gallo). Ultimately, people are the key to success as no single idea Steve had would have been successful had not others joined his crusade.
Similarly, Martin Luther King and Gandhi did not develop followers just by his inspiring speeches. Instead, they spent the greater part bonding, building coalitions, and connecting with communities one person at a time. Their powerful agenda moved forward as they mobilised people together on a personal level. Great leaders have powerful one-on-one dialogues mobilising people to their cause.
Focusing on the Journey
Steve Jobs seems to be all over the place with so many new ideas and innovative products. Yet, he was extremely focused and clear where his journey required him to go.
Steve said, “the people who are doing the work are the moving force behind Apple. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organisation and keep it at bay.” He ensures that he removes hindrances from the focus.
Focusing on the most important issues means you have to say “NO to 1000 things” including distractions, which is difficult to do. Steve adds, ” Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. The great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
Steve is clearly focused on a few key items that will truly “make a dent in the universe” adding “I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.” Likewise, we too can learn to prioritise and focus on truly value-added vision-related activity.
Execute Flawlessly
It’s easy to execute on your vision when things go well. Usually, things never go to plan. Steve recalls, “at Pixar making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story wasn’t great. We stopped production for five months.”
At Pixar, there was a ‘story crisis’ for every film. And at Apple, according to Steve, there is a crisis for almost every single major project or product. But executing flawlessly means overcoming these challenges and tribulations through discipline, as he claims, “To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline.”
Every Monday, Steve has a marathon ‘process’ meeting with his team. He says, “what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. And we do it every single week.” Ram Charan, famous business guru whom I interviewed recently on the “Leaderonomics Show” wrote a book on execution. The key message is the same as Steve — execution is boring and tedious and repetitive. But it’s this rigour that ultimately enables organisations to be successful. Steve understood the power of ruthless execution.
Finally, every journey will require overcoming obstacles. At 21, Steve was the charismatic boy wonder who co-founded Apple. He was worth $200 million by 25, but was thrown out of the company he founded by age 30. Steve lost everything when kicked out of Apple and could easily have given up and thrown in the towel. But he started all over again with NeXT and Pixar not losing his passion.
Leadership is never an easy journey. It is hard work and filled with challenges. Steve recently had to fight two near-death experiences with cancer but takes the positives out of it saying, “remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”
No one said leadership was easy but it is definitely worth the journey.
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Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise passionate about creating more Steve Jobs in our nation. To watch video interviews and learn from great leaders from across the world, login to www.leaderonomics.com/theleaderonomicsshow
Perseverance - commitment, hard work, patience, endurance;
Ruthless - having no pity : merciless, crue;
