Ganesh N. Devy, a boy from Kolhapur did his schooling in Marathi medium. Within a few months of his getting into college, he had to drop out as the medium of instruction was in English which he found hard to comprehend. Continue reading

Ganesh N. Devy, a boy from Kolhapur did his schooling in Marathi medium. Within a few months of his getting into college, he had to drop out as the medium of instruction was in English which he found hard to comprehend. Continue reading
“We are having our Annual Sales Conference and we would like you to deliver a Key Note address for our Pan-India Sales Team on Value Selling.” said Ramesh, the HR Manager of an IT company over phone.
“Thanks, but how did you know about me? “ I asked. “We make our own referral checks in the market before deciding on the speaker.” said Ramesh. Continue reading
Generally we look at curing addictions by eliminating the impact of the external environment. For example if a person is addicted to alcohol, he is persuaded to reduce the dependence on alcohol by suggestions on how alcohol is bad for health, its effect on the family, health and financial security. The patient is also exhorted to join Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) so as to reduce his dependence. These interventions work sometime but also tend to fail when a patient relapses as he is unable to resist the temptation.
Let us look at an alternative model from the Buddhist perspective. (Refer figure). An event (stage I) that happens outside is perceived inside the body through any or a combination of the five sense organs like eyes, ears etc. Sometimes it can be only an aural input like a piece of music or a multi-sensory input like relishing delicious mutton biryani ( sight, smell, taste, partially sound )This second stage is called as perception and acknowledgement of the external event which is a MAP and not the actual event and is termed as Vigyan in Pali. (Stage II). The moment an input is perceived, it is immediately evaluated by Sangya (stage III) which compares the event with something similar in the memory bank. Based on the comparison the event is either pigeonholed as either good or bad. The comparison instantaneously produces a sensation (Stage IV)) on the body which is either a positive or a negative one. The positive sensation may be tingling, soothing or a similar sensation whereas a negative sensation can be an itching, pain or a similar sensation. So far so good. The journey up till now from an external event of tasting a morsel of mutton biryani produces either positive or negative sensations which do not exclusively depend on whether the biryani is good or bad but depending on how it is perceived and the corresponding sensation it produces on the body. For example, a person who loves spicy Hyderabadi Biryani may like the taste if it is comparable to the one prepared by his mother. (Evaluation – stage III) An American who is used to bland food may find the Biriyani quite pungent. The same food has produced two different body sensations: for the former it is positive, and for the latter it is negative.
At this juncture, the subconscious mind comes into play and depending on the type of sensation, shall either produce a bond which is either of craving/attraction or Aversion (Raaga or Dwesha Stage V). The person decides to either have the next morsel or avoids depending on the bond that is created by the subconscious mind. A simple example of biryani can be compared to Alcohol, Nicotine or any substance drug.
Myths of Addictions:
How to Bring Change:
It should be clearly understood that the first four stages are primarily automatic on which a person does not have much control, which include the event(I), the perception & acknowledgement by the senses( II) the evaluation ( III) & the sensations on the body due to evaluation (IV) .However the reaction to the body sensations is within a person’s control. The bonds of attachment and aversion are continuously in the subconscious mind every moment. Taking an analogy of the hard disk of a computer, continuously the data is written by way of bonds (sankhara) which are habit forming.
If we stop creating new bonds, slowly the old ones will wither way and gradually the change starts happening. To bring this, awareness of the mind and body plays a very important role. It is not about concentration of the mind but a simple process of choiceless awareness which helps a person see the rapid thought process happening in the mind. Simple exercise like watching one’s breath slowly makes the mind so sharp that at one stage one is able to observe the body sensations. These sensations in a day-to-day life are generally not observable as the mind is gross.
The major trap for the mind to get into is while observing the sensations. People may start hankering after the pleasant ones and despise the bad ones. At this juncture, one has to observe the sensations with equanimity developing a clear insight that any sensation: be it positive or negative is ultimately going to create a sankhara, an impression on the mind. By developing equanimity towards any sensations; slowly the bonds get reduced in the subconscious mind. A change happens at the subconscious level which is long-lasting.
For most of us there is a gap between knowing and doing. At a cognitive level people know the terrible effects of excessive smoking, drinking. However the behaviour can change only at a subconscious level. To summarize, the sensations on the body produce the addictions and not the external event. This profound technique has been the unique contribution of Gautama Buddha. His technique of Vipassana has helped a number of people to bring a behavioural change in managing anger, fear, curing phobias or come out of addictions. Experiments were carried out on the prisoners of Tihar Jail by this technique which has amply demonstrated the efficacy of the technique.
Apart from curing addictions, the above technique of choiceless awareness which provides insights into the mind-body connect can be used in curing phobias, pain, dysfunctional anger etc. Amygdala is the seat of emotions in the human brain from where anger, fear, jealousy etc emanate. The addictions which happen at a subconscious level are very difficult to eradicate by instructing the brain at a conscious level or a cognitive level. Following examples will illustrate the change was completely or partially brought by this technique.
You will observe that by the chanting of mantras, Swati was feeling calm and serence at a conscious and a superficial level. However when she looked deep within with awareness she could see the tremendous anger.
From the above three examples, you may observe that the events which had happened more than a decade back were stored in the form of sensations. However due to the automatic nature of the subconscious mind whenever this sensations appeared on the mind there were repeated cycles of aversions which made the subconscious mind filled with aversion; which the conscious mind was not aware of. However by sheer mindfulness slowly the bonds of aversion ( Stage V) were reduced and the people were able to come out of their misery.
Rajan Parulekar| Bangalore | India| rajan@paradigm-info.com| +91 98450 14098
Peter Drucker was consulting for a CEO of a major bank in US. For every meeting the CEO used to assign Peter a time slot of 90 minutes. A highly effective person, the CEO was delivering consistent results for his bank year-on-year. During the one-and-half hour meeting the CEO refrained from taking any telephone calls Continue reading
Natasha, a sales manager from a renowned hotel in Goa interviewed a candidate called Moin, a B.Com graduate for the post of a trainee sales executive. Moin was a tall, fair and handsome guy who spoke fluently during the interview. Natasha felt he was an ideal candidate for sales. When asked about his strength, Moin replied his strength was manipulation. Save for this ‘minor’ aberration he looked OK on other fronts.
He was shortlisted for the next interview, where he repeated the same answer when asked by the GM. The considerate GM said, “young man, please go home and refer the dictionary and check the meaning of the word manipulation. You should not give such answers. Elsewhere you would have been rejected straight away.”
After joining, Moin started throwing tantrums . When asked to usher a guest in the restaurant, he said, “I am graduate, I do not do such things.” Natasha once asked him to follow up for payment from one of the regular guests of the hotel. Moin fired the guest saying that if the latter does not pay immediately, he may have to face dire consequences. Luckily Natasha, the manager overheard the telephonic talk, seized the receiver and apologized to the guest. Within two months, Moin resigned without giving any reasons.
The manager had spent her precious time of hers as well as of others including the GM. It is very rare for someone to contribute significantly during the first six months. Precious time and money of the organization were wasted. Some of the mistakes managers make while recruiting are:
For more details please refer the chapter, Why do Salesmen Love to Talk in my book Contextual Selling (for more details http://www.paradigm-info.com)
“I tried to get an appointment with my client for six months, I could not succeed”, said Shashi, my friend in an Omani Company. “However the moment my Scottish counterpart sitting in the next cabin called him, he got an appointment the next day”.
Two Caucasian ladies, one French and the other a Polish, sang an average composition on peace & harmony in Bangalore for 2-3 minutes. After their recital, there were hordes of people from the audience who wanted to get photographs along with them. The singers were neither celebrities nor accomplished singers, but the colour of their skin made all the difference! Let us look at the different types of perceptual biases most of us have.
It is not possible to eliminate all the biases, but the least we can do is to be aware of them and in mindfulness the chances of our decisions going wrong can be minimized.
Why is there a gap between efforts executives put and the results they get? The linkage between the improvement in one’s skills vis-à-vis the efforts put can be termed as structure of growth.
Last two weeks I was conducting training programs on Effective Value Selling for Capital Equipments which were in the price range of Rs. 50 L to Rs. 1crore.( Approx. $100k-200K) Selling of CNC machines involves considerable technical complexity and the sales engineers need to understand the customer behaviour in a sensitive manner. For most of the participants, I perceived a huge gap between the job role and the skill set possessed.
Remember the adage, practise makes a man perfect. Generally it is assumed that the improvement of a skill is directly proportional to the efforts, time spent and the intelligence of a person which is partially true. But it also depends on the domain in which one is working. Most of the domains may have the following types of growth structure. There are a number of growth structures but the major ones are: Logarithmic, Exponential and Sinusoidal ( Please refer figure: growth figures )
The first phase of logarithmic growth is steep and success comes easily. The second phase is like a plateau where the rate of growth slows down considerably. (refer figure a. logarithmic growth)
Thanks partly to media hype, you see such growth in music ( with pop stars, Little Champs in Saregamapa shows etc.) and in sports like IPL Cricket. With some talent and average efforts some people in such domain, become instant celebrities overnight. The real challenge is in phase 2 where you need to maintain your disciplined habits. You need to move away from your regular routine and break away from those habits. You can even develop a technique which may be beyond the textbook. Tiger Woods reinvented his swing in the second phase.
Each field may have either one or combination of the above growth structures. So to be an expert and an authority in a specific domain, it is not only important what traits you carry ( which is your DNA ) but to see whether there is a synergy between your traits and structure of your domain.
Remember, Vinod Kambli and Sachin Tendulkar had similar talent. Sachin could sustain in the phase 2 of logarithmic growth; Kambli could not.
As a professional remember, a formal education at the university does you no harm, provided you start learning there afterwards. It is simply beyond attending a 2-day company sponsored training program.
Can I send Salil, my Sales executive, age 23 years for the Key Account Management programs? said Jagdish,,Sales Manager of an engineering company. I had to tell him the following aspects which determines the ground rules for implementing Key Account Management (KAM)