It was only the second meeting of the Board of the $ 43 billion-PepsiCo outside the US. CEO Indira Nooyi chose to have the meeting at Mumbai, India. Guess who spoke to this distinguished Board which includes the Chairman & CEO of Novartis and the President & CEO of Colgate-Palmolive?

Apart from hearing from Ratan Tata, CEO of the Tata Group and Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro, the 11 member Board of PepsiCo heard about supply chain management and Six Sigma from Mumbai’s dabbawalas! Their’s is an amazing success story. They deliver 200,000 lunch boxes to Mumbai’s hungry office -goers everyday with a 99.99 % accuracy.

I am proud to be an admirer of the dabbawalas. I am sure you will be one too after you read about their fascinating story here.

Board

I like this idea of using lessons from tennis to describe mistakes we commit in our careers. That’s what Jeffrey A. Krames does when he writes about the 7 Worst Career Mistakes You Can Make. A well compiled list with mistakes all of us can relate to as we have come across them in our careers.

Building on this theme, some of the common ” unforced errors” I have seen include:

1. Not studying the opponent  adequately: Have the humility to understand the opponent’s game.  Each has his/her strengths and styles of playing. We often walk into business situations unprepared- either through overconfidence or sheer laxity.

2.  Being versatile in all kinds of surfaces: The greatest tennis stars have been at ease on all kinds of surfaces. They are not grass court specialists or clay court experts. In business too, you come across different stages of growth, the ups and downs inevitable in growing your business, the ace is adept in all situations and not only when circumstances are favourable.

Here were my thoughts, would you like to add yours? It’s your turn to serve!

More and more people these days seem to want to be entrepreneurs. Some do so out of a feeling that they are best suited for it- others because they sense opportunities they believe have not been exploited.  What kind of life do you lead as an entrepreneur? Is it the dream world that it is often made out to be? What are the challenges involved?

Jay Goltz writes a very honest and open post on An Entrepreneurial Life in the New York Times. I guess entrepreneurs are wired differently- as indeed are their long suffering wives!

Making the news once more, is Prof. C.K.Prahalad, who was voted the world’s most influential management thinker recently. Prof. Prahalad has this honour for the second time in a row.

The Thinkers 50 is a biennial list of management thinkers put together by The Times along with the London Business School and the IE Business School at Madrid. Prof. Prahalad is the Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan.

It is heartening to see that the 2009 list includes six Indian-born management thinkers. Apart from Prof. Prahalad, in the latest list are: Ratan Tata, chief executive of Tata Industries, at No 12; Ram Charan, executive coach, at No 13; S. (Kris) Gopalakrishnan, founder of Infosys, at No 15; Vijay Govindarajan, of Tuck Business School, at No 24; and Rakesh Khurana, of Harvard Business School, at No 44.

One remembers Prof. Prahalad’s pioneering work on the ” Bottom of the Pyramid” which brought new attention to an emerging market force that many did not consider before.

Good news is around the corner for executives in India. So it would appear from the results of the latest survey by Hewitt. It says that the biggest pay hike in the Asia Pacific region in 2010 will be in India.

Indians are to get an increase in base pay of about 10 % said this survey which covered over 2000 companies in the Asia Pacific region.  This comes after China and India- the two fastest growing large economies in the world -gave only 4.5 % and 6.3 % increase on base pay this year. This was the lowest figure since 2005.

Another news item that caught my attention relates to Religare. As a retention strategy the group appears to have dished out luxury cars like BMWs and Mercedes -worth over Rs. 20-lakhs ( Rs.100,000 = 1 lakh) to its CEOs.

I am convinced that however tough the market situation may be- there will always be a place- at a price of course- for top talent. You need to figure out- are you in this select pool?

One of the biggest festivals in India is Diwali- the Festival of Lights.

Diwali signifies the triumph of good over evil and is characterized by the lighting of colourful lamps.

It is celebrated with zeal by the rich and poor alike. People greet each other with sweets and burst firecrackers- though this is fast dwindling these days because of a growing concern for the environment etc.

Here’s wishing all of you a very happy Diwali.

It’s well known that we are at our creative best when we are young. The older we get, the less creative we become. It was nice to see that a creative idea of a 15 year old girl from India, Sarojini Mahajan, has been picked up by Stanford University.

Sarojini’s idea is about using the human pulse to charge a cell phone. Hers was one amongst  over 1,300 ideas received as part of IGNITE- a competition organised for kids by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF).  I am sure young Sarojini will treasure the recognition she gets from Stanford even more than the $ 1000 that she received. This was a token amount to develop the prototype.

One thing is for sure- creativity needs to be practiced if we are to maintain the creative edge. If not used, it withers over time and dies within us. Encourage your team members to come out with ideas- however bizarre they may appear to be at first. If we don’t even try to be creative, we simply never will be. The best of innovations have their roots in ideas which may have sounded far fetched to many. You and I know of so many such cases.

Equally important to develop creativity is to look at ideas without being judgmental or critical. This is easier said than done- most of us tend to be highly skeptical, particularly when the idea comes from someone else!

Congratulations to Sarojini. May India produce many more bright minds like hers.

Have a look at the latest Carnival of HR- on show at Jon Ingham’s Strategic HCM blog.

The theme is largely on teams and social networking. I liked many of the blog posts. I hope you too will find them informative and useful.

Jon has put together an impressive array of blog posts which cover a wide range of topics. I am glad to see that the HR Carnival continues to be such a success.

If you are in a field aligned to HR and would like to host the carnival, find details here.

The schedule is booked right up to August 2010- which speaks volumes of the popularity of this Carnival.

My heart warms when I hear stories of people who have made it big by following their natural talents and passion. Here’s one  in the New York Times by Amy Wallace, I am sure you will like: It’s the story of  40 year old Cesar Millan- the Los Angeles based “Dog Whisperer”. Millan, an immigrant from Mexico, has over the years become an indispensable trainer and coach to the dogs of America’s rich and famous.

Hiss client list reads like a Who’s Who of America’s big names. What  I liked best was his perseverance in following his heart to a career which may sound unconventional but turns out to be extremely rewarding financially. His first three books have become best sellers on the New York Times and have sold two million copies.

Milan’s credo is that ” he rehabilitates dogs and trains people”. The extent to which his business has grown and become a best seller itself is reflected in his interesting website. See this for yourself here.

He is the master in dog psychology and teaches owners how they should be assertive and be seen as pack leaders by their pets. You should walk the dog, says Cesar. The dog should not walk you.

At the end, it’s all about body language and assertiveness. The same principles actually apply to people too, don’t they?

Should we say a congratulatory ‘Woof” to Cesar!

” In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it ” wrote Robert Heinlein, the leading American writer of science fiction.  How many of us have got so stuck in the routine that we are not able to do what we want to do?

Strange as it might sound, very often we struggle to achieve what we want to do, not merely because we are too busy but because the very things we want to do- are not featured in our priorities as a goal!!

I, for one, am keen on writing a novel. This has been a dream for many years. I have decided to act and move it from a dream to a goal. In this context, I was delighted to stumble upon 43 Things. This is a venture of the Seattle based Robot Co-op.

I explored the site and found what I liked. The top line informed me that at that moment 2,159,342 people in 15,162 cities were doing 1,678,446 things! Let me become person no: 2,159,343 said I and signed on.

The site seems to have provision for you to articulate your goals and track them as you make progress. You have the opportunity to “cheer” others and in turn get cheered by them if you post an achievement.

I am a strong believer in goal setting. Working without goals often lead you to expend time and energy without getting anywhere. Goals are useful – not just to pursue hobbies- like learning a new language or learning to water ski- but also to bring focus to our careers.

We can determine specific actions we need to take to get us to our career milestones- and work assiduously to achieving them.

My suggestions:

• Make sure the goal you set is really meaningful to you- not as a fad because everyone else is doing it.
• Write the goal in very specific terms and not in a general sense. ” To be a good communicator” you will agree, is a weak goal . ” To make 3 presentations before audiences on a topic of my choice within the next one month” is more specific- and measurable.
• Act on the goal. Writing the goal is perhaps the easiest part. The difficult part involves taking purposeful actions.
• Track progress. Make it a point to know whether you are moving forward or not- towards achieving your goal.

43 Things brings to you yet another dimension of social networking. It gives you access to the thoughts and actions of many others who may have similar goals as you do.

I look forward to learning from others and sharing what I know.