Lessons from a Leader: Mark Zuckerberg

I'm glad to have lived in a time when Artificial Intelligence has taken a huge leap from fiction to a form. But the level of our surrendering to IoT is a question to ponder about.

Above the leader

Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder & CEO of one of the most active social networking, Facebook has taken a challenge for 2016.

Mark Zuckerberg is creating history by coding Jarvis. What we saw as Jarvis in our favorite Iron Man series has taken a form from being a fiction.

Basically, Mark Zuckerberg had created an internet switch for all his home based needs like fetching a fresh tee shirt, toasting breads, turning lights off or on, to say weather updates, meeting schedules, to play a song. The actual switches are connected to an internet switch. Several items like weather updates, music from Spotify had been reverse engineered and programmed and coded to create the new Jarvis.

Lesson from the Leader

Mark runs the most active social networking site, Facebook as a CEO. A position that requires so much attention, talking to, meeting so many, addressing a lot of issues, having a global presence as organisation, managing new businesses, expansions, facing several challenges, considering legal and so many unending views. I'm sure 24 hours a day is simply never enough for someone like him.

Apart from being a CEO for one of the most influential organisation, he's also married, has a child and manages a perfect work life balance.

Irrespective of managing such a great organisation as Facebook, managing his personal life, he's still figured out time to code and create Jarvis. How well should someone manage his time to achieve so much time!

Now that's a lesson to take from Mark and raise our standards to achieve so much and yet continue accomplish several new challenges.

Have you chosen a challenge for 2017?

Love,

Lessons from a leader: Stephen Hawking

A leader need not be the most qualified & most influential person in a common interest group or organisation. He who sets an example, and lives by it for even someone at a far end on the other side of world is also a leader, who leads by example.

Situation

Why do I go through so much pain? I am so talented which I either know myself or my mentors have realised and said so, yet I don't get the opportunity to shine. Why do I not have enough of what it takes to be successful? Why do I face so many restrictions. Why am I unable to stretch my feathers and fly? Although I have been given wings, why are the broken that they are only a burden, rather allow me to fly?

Are these questions running in your head? You are simply not alone. Each of us are equally gifted and equally created. Yet what we do with our abilities lies at our very own will. Although a few might have the power of will, have restrictions or other suffering that might tie us down from performing our duties.

How we chose to dump our weaknesses back and still have hopes to complete our duties, requires mental strength. Which, unfortunately takes time to gather for each of us.

Leader

Stephen Hawking one of the greatest physicist alive and one of the most intelligent person was diagnosed with ALS (yes, the same for which almost few years back Mark Zuckerberg & Bill Gates followed by the rest of the world took up the ice bucket challenge).

When he was initially diagnosed with the disease, he was told he had two years to live. His condition was that his voluntary muscular movement was restricted. Doctors considered to even take him off the life support once. Stephen Hawking took it up positively and reminded himself that he had work to complete. Thanks to his love life, who supported him and took a great call to stand by his side.

Stephen Hawking went on to accomplish a lot of achievements, written titles and books at an advanced stage of the disease where he wasn't even able to speak.

Had Stephen Hawking allowed his mind to crunch negative thoughts, would he have been so successful in life? Had he thought he had only two years to live and chosen to live it without any focus, would he now be known for what he is?

Lesson

Now, read the questions, in the last paragraph before the leader, and ask yourselves a last question, do you want to continue cursing yourselves about your restrictions and limitations? Do you not want to achieve and show the world your abilities that you overcame in spite of the limitations and let someone like me write your success stories?

Think! Arise, Awake & Stop Not Till The Goal Is Reached.

Love,

One never knows it all!

One of my friend makes a remark that it's time he leaves his current organisation, with less than a year experience. An article from Harvard suggests that the current job hop rate is at 4.6 years per organisation. And the article also recommends strong reasons to decide when it's time to switch.

The one point not pointed out, and that as an excuse for my pal to switch is probably the most ridiculous of all I've ever encountered. I'm told, there's nothing more to learn. I've learnt it all. I need to switch to another organisation to improve my learning further.

To know, is to know you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
- Socrates

I guess the context of my post is revealed with the above saying.

Now for those of you who are patient enough to read the rest of the post gets a chance to read a personal experience which made me get my thoughts even more stronger on the above lines.

I traveled to Singapore recently and I did everything possible to have my home work about navigation, food etc. Since this was a trip all by myself, and to a new country, I covered as many details as possible in order to be well prepared.

I guess the incident occurred just to make me realise my ignorance levels. My first local bus trip on my first day of landing turned out to be the epic embarrassing moment for the rest of my life. The lady who drove the bus didn't know English and I didn't know Chinese. We exchanged sign languages which didn't help and she couldn't even read my phone which displayed texts in English.

It was quite a scene before the whole crowd until a local lady stepped up to translate for the two of us.

No matter how prepared we are, how much we have learned, there's still so much more left that is even beyond our imagination.

Will someone tell this to me friend?

Love,

The Difference

The current education system demands replications of texts, phrases and sentences from the books to test answer sheets. The education system doesn't validate the understanding of the students. And we, happily forget what we studied over night after dumping them in a span of three hours. And then preparation for next exam starts and students forget what they studied once the exam is over. We don't read again unless we don't qualify that particular subject.

Ask any student to explain why sugar gets equally distributed in a cup of tea, chances are less that they can relate it to diffusion. How many Electrical & Electronic Engineers are able to fix a repaired iron box at home?!

That's the difference between studying and learning.

If by seeing the movie "Sethupathi", a Tamil movie where the child rises up to the occasion and handles the situation, but becomes passive when it doesn't require intervention, if a student of Psychology or Emotional Intelligence or HR Specialization recognizes and relates it to "Emergent Leadership", then learning has really taken place.

Same is the interesting difference between listening and hearing. A lot of us are capable of hearing. But we unconsciously ignore the ability to listen and merely hear to what's going on around us. By hearing, our ears can grasp the sound of a fan, honk, bell and whatever. But when we listen, we imbibe, we process and assimilate the inputs of the teacher, friend or our partner.

Are you differentiating?

Love,