From Kevin Robert's brain box -CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi

(From the archives of Dream Scope)

Thoughts on….On your way to win the world.

1.Make the small decisions with your head; the big ones with your heart. Your heart is the compass that points to your happiness.

2.Decide what it is you will never do. It’s hard to decide exactly what you will do. Maybe it's not possible; perhaps your goals may change. Improve your chances of a good decision by telling yourself what you absolutely will not do. Minimizes your chances of unhappiness - of finding yourself in a job that you hate, that goes nowhere.

3.Take responsibility for your own happiness. In your hearts, you know - or you will know - what it will take to make you happy. You are responsible for getting there. Your happiness is too valuable to surrender to someone else.

4.Prepare yourself to get lucky. Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. All of you here will get opportunities in life. You’ll get chances to make your own luck. If you're prepared.

5.Pursue failure. It’s the only way to achieve meaningful success. I’ve been successful in my pursuit of failure - several times. A genius is a person who makes the same mistake. Once. You won't know your limits till you crash up against them.

6.Don’t look back. Life is too short to spend it gazing into the rear-view mirror. You’ll make mistakes; if you obsess over them, you'll keep making them.

7.Ask dumb questions. The "what if" question is the best question of all. A great question is at least as valuable as a great answer. It’s how you get to create world-changing ideas.

8.Avoid moderation. Be hot, or cold, but not lukewarm. Nothing succeeds like excess. And only abuse your bodies on the weekend.

9.Turn your peaks into a plateau. For all of us, there are times and places when we're right in the zone. For most people, these occasions are rare and unpredictable. We use so little of our capacity for so much that is so important - work, family, love.

10.One final thought. The words that sum up my life; nothing is impossible. Believe it.

Writing advice by famous authors

Famous writers reveal and explain elements of their craft.

I don’t actually compose in longhand. I lie back in a long chair and make notes, you know, bits of dialogue and then another bit of description. You see, I don’t try to make it continuous. Then I work at the typewriter. I find one system that works very well with me is to sit at the typewriter and have a pad on my desk, on which I write out the next bit of the story, maybe a bit of dialogue or description by hand, and then transfer it to the machine. But I make several drafts. The stuff I do on the typewriter isn’t the final version. I mess it about a lot with ink, and put in bits and alter adjectives and things, and then make a fair copy of it. The great thing I like working on the typewriter. It rather inspires me.
P.G.Wodehouse, 1971

I start with a concept that outrages me, something that bothers the hell out of me. I think arresting fiction is written out of a sense of outrage. I try to find something with an underpinning of reality. I generally go back over recent history looking for a situation where the events have a conceivable official explanation but where the solution might be other than it is purported to be.
Robert Ludlum, 1977

You should spend thirty minutes a day thinking about sex. The purpose of this is to get yourself sexually excited, which builds tremendous amounts of energy and then carry that into your work. Get yourself in that extreme state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you are in a carnal embrace: Time stops and nothing else matters. You should always writer with an erection. Even if you are a woman.
Tom Robbins, 1988

I had no time to write –zero time. But I figured I could make time if I could carve out little segments. I knew it would be a slow process, but I didn’t care because I was in no hurry. I learned two very valuable lessons in doing that. One, you can’t get in a hurry. Two, write every day if you want to see your novel completed. My goal was to write a page a day. Some days I could only find thirty minutes, some days two hours. Sometime I would write five or six pages, sometimes, just one. But writing every single day is of utmost importance. Especially like most beginning writers, you have another full-time job.
John Grisham 1993.
(More to come….)

The art of letting go and moving on in life

There are three things that all humans should absolutely learn to do:
When you like/love someone tell them –be it mom, dad, sibling, friend, husband, lover, children….for god’s sake TELL THEM. Then learn the art of letting go and finally learn to move on in life.

My friends say, “Yes, you need to tell people how you feel about them, but when it is between a man and a woman and if the woman happens to like the man then she should do anything but tell him.” My question: Why? Friends answer: “Men like to chase and not be chased. A woman should always wait for the man to make the first move. If she doesn’t 99% of the time the man loses interest. That’s the law of nature.” They might have a point there. But I still prefer to stick to my guns. When you like a person (irrespective of the gender) you need to let them know your feelings. It is based on a simple logic: When somebody tells me that they like me or they appreciate me (I mean genuinely), my heart floods with a joy that adds a zing to my step. It is a beautiful feeling. Humans are social animals and we feed off each other’s energies, vibrations and love. So, I presume, it is the same joy that would warm the cockles of the heart of the other person who hears it from me about how I feel about him/her. Why then hide those feelings that are pure, positive and all love? Why play mind games? Why wait for the other person to discover your untold feelings? And if he or she doesn’t `discover' then set out to manipulate their actions till you get what you want? Life is too short to play complicated games. So I say when you like someone tell them –it doesn’t matter that you are a woman.

I will always carry the regret of not expressing my feelings towards a relative and then it was too late. She meant the world to me and on the day I saw her face down in the well in the backyard I knew I would never be able to tell her how much I loved her and what joy she brought into my life. I never want to repeat that mistaket ever in my life.

One must also be prepared for the consequences of our actions. It is here that my friends are absolutely true in their analysis. Nine out of ten times, men are unable to handle a woman expressing her feelings towards them. They become Olympic sprinters on a 100 mt dash. Even when you want to convince them that you are not thinking of walking down the aisle with them for the next thousand years, they get the hibee jeebes. They become so damn nervous that they don’t listen to what you have to say: I like you and all I want to do is get to know you better and see where it goes. So before you reach the third word in the sentence the man is in the next town. Still, no matter how painful the rejection is I believe one should always be true to their feelings.

Well, you tell the person how you feel and your feelings aren’t reciprocated. Then what do you do. It is here that we need to learn the art of LETTING GO. Which a nurse in a hospital in Bangalore refused to do. Apparently, the young woman was unable to accept the fact that her boyfriend wanted to end the relationship with her. So she decided to confront him with a bottle of acid. In the ensuing fracas the man escaped the furious acidic fumes but the woman was not so lucky. Today, she is in the same hospital where she worked, with 80% burns fighting for her life. Was the man worth it? Never in a zillion years is anyone worth your life.

This is what I don’t understand –when somebody doesn’t reciprocate your feelings, then what use is it to want that man/woman in your life? Do you genuinely think you can be happy with such an arrangement? Don’t we all deserve the best? Why should we settle down for the second best?

You cannot change how people feel towards you. It has to come from within them. Only those feelings last. They might have genuine reasons for not reciprocating your feelings. Or they might be plain jerks. No matter what, their rejection is not a reflection of who you are and what you are as a person. It is just the universe telling you –He/she is not for you. There is someone better and more deserving waiting for you. Let go. You do all that you have to do and then let go. However, clichéd it might sound, it is true that if he/she is meant for you they will come back otherwise they were never meant to be in your life to begin with.

Letting go is easier said than done. What makes it easier is the ability to follow the principle of Moving On in life. Firstly, never sweep the incident under the carpet. Acknowledge you are hurt and disappointed. And that you feel as unworthy as a kitchen rag. That you want to turn your man into a rare steak and feed him to your dogs. But then your grieving period should come with an expiry date. Anything between 24 hours to two weeks should be ideal or whatever works for you, let it not be a life-long venture. During this period, talk to your friends, write a journal, and get all the venom, the sadness, the hurt, the pain -everything out of your system. It is cathartic. Learn to be more forgiving of your mistakes. Then when your time is up, get ready to see the other side. Maybe the person did you a favor by being honest about his/her feelings. Maybe he or she is a wonderful person it is just that they are not for you. They have someone else waiting for them out there in the world just like you have someone waiting for you. But until and unless, you let go of this person, the universe will not bring you the one that is truly meant for you.

Think of the good times that you had together. Forgive each other for the hurt that you have caused. And move on in life, carrying only the sweet memories of the past and hope for the future. Remember, only when you let go, you gain something.

Naked Demi Moore Syndrome

This was written by Erma Bombeck, world renowned columnist in 1991, soon after a very pregnant Demi Moore posed naked on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine known as the MOTHER OF ALL COVERS. The cover photograph took the world by storm. I came across this column in one of my old collection-piles. It was funny when I read it the first time. It still is….and some of my friends who have become mothers since say, “Very true.”

Second Pregnancies Erase Any Modesty

Since Demi Moore’s Vanity Fair appearance, which gives new meaning to “mother of all covers,” I’ve read a host of male reactions. They range from “disgusting” to “shocking” to “breathtakingly beautiful.”

As a mother, I feel bound to tell you: You are missing the point. This is Demi Moore’s second child. I’ll repeat that. This is Demi Moore’s second child. Translated, that means modesty is no longer a word in her vocabulary.

I am willing to bet that before the birth of her first offspring, she wore weights in the hems of her maternity tops. She demurely crossed her legs at the ankles at all times and requested two sheets in the gynecologist’s office. All that changed when she entered the hospital to deliver.
There is a stream of men we have never seen before who whip in and out of our hospital rooms like they are caught in a revolving door. They invade our bare chests with stethoscopes and throw back the sheets to “take a look at what we have here.” They pump, probe, squeeze and push on every part of our bodies. Hey interrupt our baths to inquire about our irregularities and watch us struggle with the hospital gowns that are too small to set a cocktail glass on.
There should be a sign over every delivery room in the country: Here enters the last modest woman on the face of the Earth!
When I delivered my second child, I shared a room with a young woman giving birth to her first. She was so modest that when she was examined, she turned her head to the wall and bit her lips until they bled. Two days after she delivered, she approached a man in the hall and said, “Doctor, I am nursing. Does this look normal to you?” and proceeded to drop her robe. A nurse guided her to her room and told her she had just bared herself to a maintenance man.
The loss of modesty is a given. You have no control over it. From that day on your body is never your own. Your children will not only watch you when you shower they will bring along their little friends. Why you are using the bathroom they will unlock the door with a shish-kebab skewer. You sit at the breakfast table with your robe open. It doesn’t matter anymore.
After I left the hospital following the birth of my first child, I somehow knew I would never be the same again. At that time, what I was feeling didn’t have a name. After this summer, I suspect it will be known as the Demi Moore syndrome.

Give me some of my past, just one more time...

Change is the only constant in life. It is inevitable. It is necessary.And its definitions are always cliched! But no matter what, the `new’ always makes your heart pine for `certain moments’ of the old; those special moments of a time gone by. Even if the `new’ is wonderful the heart hangs around certain exceptional moments of the past. Moments that will never be repeated. Moments those come with the rider –`one time only’.

There are definite `Moments’ in life that can never be had, ever again. But you want to –just one more time…..Wonderful school days of yore, carefree time spent with college mates who thought that the future was nothing but rosy and all will remain young, happy, untroubled and together –forever. The thump of an adolescent heart when it discovers love for the first time (okay, fine it was infatuation, but the 15 year old heart didn’t know it at that time). The first time your boyfriend took your hand in his and the sensation that ran right through your veins all the way to your toes. The first kiss – (in my opinion, highly overrated) when you expected the world to come to a standstill (and you waited and waited and waited, but it never happened) still the strangely sweet sensation that you felt in your heart moments before your untouched lips were marked forever would never be felt ever again. The first time you heard someone say `I love you’ to you and how your body morphed into an imaginary eagle soaring high in the clear blue skies, thinking it was going to last forever. Soon you realize it’s not to be. But that first heady sensation was so truly marvelous. Moments before you meet a person with whom you shared a great chemistry over the phone line for months together. You might continue to have that chemistry but the earlier one was dearer. The chase before the catch. Precious moments of being wooed and pursued before you give in. The moments of courtship before copulation. Moments that are unique and will never be repeated again.

These treasured memories are cloaked in nothing but sheer joy and pleasure and untainted by the vagaries of life. And they are felt just once and are never repetitive. These memories are important for they are the catalysts of change. They push you forward in life. From one stage to another. They prompt you to take the next step into another realm. Hurling you into the thick of change; of a future filled with promise and hope. But there is no going back to where you came from. The minute you step on to the next stage the previous one becomes a `memory’ –lost in the past for eternity.

And these memories fade with time, no matter how desperately you try to hold on to them. Ultimately what you are left with is a dull ache of things gone by and an outline of what once was. You pine for them. You yearn for them. You hope to have just one more tryst with those precious moments embedded in your past. But the truth that you can’t makes change all the more painful and poignant.

Recently, I made numerous memories to be stored in the treasure chest of life. I know I can never have those moments in life ever again. I wish I had somehow found a way to prolong those moments, but all special moments come with a time limit; an expiry date. Those moments launched me into the next phase in life. But like all humanity, I know I will pine for just one more dalliance with those special moments from my past, in the twilight years of my life, crying silently – “just one more time….”

Small is the new Big

Here's some more from Dreamscope.......

Stories from a blog -Seth Godin, an author and thought leader

Big used to matter. Big meant economies of scale. (you never hear about "economies of tiny" do you?) people, usually guys, often ex-marines, wanted to be ceo of a big company. the fortune 500 is where people went to make… a fortune. there was a good reason for this. value was added in ways that big organizations were good at. value was added with efficient manufacturing, widespread distribution and very large r&d staffs. value came from hundreds of operators standing by and from nine-figure tv ad budgets. value came from a huge sales force.

of course, it's not just big organizations that added value. big planes were better than small ones, because they were faster and more efficient. big buildings were better than small ones because they facilitated communications and used downtown land quite efficiently. bigger computers could handle more simultaneous users, as well.get big fast was the motto for startups, because big companies can go public and get more access to capital and use that capital to get even bigger. big accounting firms were the place to go to get audited if you were a big company, because a big accounting firm could be trusted. big law firms were the place to find the right lawyer, because big law firms were a one-stop shop.

and then small happened.

enron (big) got audited by andersen (big) and failed (big.) the world trade center was a target. tv advertising is collapsing so fast you can hear it. american airlines (big) is getting creamed by jet blue (think small). boingboing (four people) has a readership growing a hundred times faster than the new yorker (hundreds of people). big computers are silly. they use lots of power and are not nearly as efficient as properly networked dell boxes (at least that's the way it works at yahoo and google). big boom boxes are replaced by tiny ipod shuffles. (yeah, i know big-screen tvs are the big thing. can't be right all the time).

i'm writing this on a laptop at a skateboard park… that added wifi for parents. because they wanted to. it took them a few minutes and $50. no big meetings, corporate policies or feasibility studies. they just did it. today, little companies often make more money than big companies. little churches grow faster than worldwide ones. little jets are way faster (door to door) than big ones. today, craigslist (18 employees) is the fourth most visited site according to some measures. they are partly owned by ebay (more than 4,000 employees) which hopes to stay in the same league, traffic-wise. they're certainly not growing nearly as fast.

small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.

small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.

small means you can tell the truth on your blog.

small means that you can answer email from your customers.

small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.

a small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they're good, not because they're big. so smart small companies are happy to hire them.

a small restaurant has an owner who greets you by name.

a small venture fund doesn't have to fund big bad ideas in order to get capital doing work. they can make small investments in tiny companies with good (big) ideas.

a small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you're sick.

is it better to be the head of craigslist or the head of ups?

small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.

don't wait. get small. think big.

dream scope navigators

roby & rahul

Hercules Ahoy!

Hercules (that thing on the right) was recently awarded the honorable distinction of Worlds Biggest Dog by Guinness World Records. Hercules is an English Mastiff and has a 38 inch neck and weighs 282 pounds. With "paws the size of softballs" the three-year-old monster is far larger and heavier than his breed's standard 200lb. limit.

10 Qs for your company and yourself -by my neighbor Roby and his business partner!

Wisdom is never new. Wisdom is never original. But wisdom is smart -so often it morphs itself into something seemingly original. But the wise always know that good wisdom is the one that is regurgitated.

So, here goes from me to you, from my neighbor to me, from “an awesome book” to my neighbor and from god-knows-where to the author of the book MAVERICKS AT WORK.

Take over Roby….

The maverick challenge

An excerpt from an awesome book we just finished reading – mavericks at work.

We’ve made the case as forcefully as we know how that you can't do big things in business if you're content with doing things a little better than your rivals. That’s the central message behind the performance of every company we visited and every executive whose work we explored in this manifesto and in our book. To help you put our messages to work, we've compiled ten questions that amount to a maverick challenge.

1. Is there a distinctive and disruptive sense of purpose that sets you apart from the competition?
The best companies are the ones that stand for the most original and compelling ideas. What ideas are you and your company fighting for?

2. Can you be provocative without provoking a backlash?
There’s a difference between challenging the status quo and inviting retribution from rivals that are bigger, richer, and more ruthless than you. One key test of any would-be disruptor is whether he or she can also be a convincing diplomat.

3. If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
We first heard this question from advertising maverick Roy Spence, who tells us that he got it from Jim Collins of good to great fame. Whatever the original source, the question is as profound as it is simple—and worth taking seriously.

4. Are you the kind of person that other smart people want to work with?
If you expect outsiders (or even colleagues) to share their best ideas with you, then don't be surprised when they expect something in return. It can be money, it can be recognition, but more often than not, what draws people into open-source projects is the chance to push them and develop their skills.

5. Can you make innovation fun?
Ideas are serious business, but if you're working to tap the brainpower of outside-the-mainstream contributors, then you have to work to keep your open-source project colorful, dramatic, and energetic.

6. Do you treat different customers differently?
If your goal is to establish a psychological contract with customers, then almost by definition you won't appeal to all customers. One test of how committed a company is to its most important customers is how fearless it is about ignoring (even offending) customers who aren't central to its mission. Not all customers are created equal.

7. Why should great people join your organization?
The best leaders understand that the best rank-and-file performers aren't motivated primarily by money. Great people want to feel like impact players inside their organizations. Great people want to be surrounded with and challenged by other great people. Put simply, great people want to feel like they're part of something greater than themselves. Does your company give them that chance?

8. Do you know a great person when you see one?
For organizations that are serious about competing on talent, who you are as a person is as important as what you know at a moment in time. That is, character counts for as much as credentials. Do you know how to conduct a character test?

9. Does your organization work as distinctively as it competes?
It’s a simple question with huge implications for productivity and performance. Leaders who are determined to elevate the people factor in business understand that the real work begins once talented people walk through the door. Hr maverick john Sullivan says it best: "stars don't work for idiots."

10. Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
We first heard this question from Gary Hamel, the world-renowned strategy guru, and it's the ultimate challenge for any executive or entrepreneur. The best leaders we've met, regardless of their age, experience, or personal style, have all been insatiable learners. In a business environment that never stops changing, you can never stop learning.

Dream scope (i.e my neighbor Roby and his business partner Rahul) navigators' notes:

The challenge to be a business maverick is to devise bold and insightful answers to four of these timeless start points that organizations of every size and in every sector need to address:

> What do you want your business to stand for – what is the purpose of your business
> How do you unleash a new business brand idea and develop your business around this idea
> How you connect every aspect of your business with your customers
> Define the spirit of your team that will help your best people achieve great results

Lets open up the maverick in us all.

Dream scope navigators

roby & rahul