Mindworks is merely a brand, a platform, for me to express myself. I coined the term after my retirement. I feel that I can contribute to upcoming managers by my writing, advising, speaking and teaching. That is what I wanted to do as I principally wanted to share my experience which I gained over fifty years of professional work. ‘The Mindworks’ is a brand platform to share and mentor executives.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]Leadership is not about you leading, it is about people following you voluntarily[/pb_blockquote]

There are two ways of getting into Industry, one is by studying to get into the industry and the other one is by getting experience. I am a more a believer in experience than theory. Many people do theory before experience. As for today’s generation they do MBA and then become a manager but in my case I first became manager and then learned during thereafter. For me knowledge came from experience which got permanently registered in my mind but there are many who go to mentoring sessions and try to learn the same things from others experience.

I have seen a lot of people with experience but there are very few that share it and the others take their experience to Chandanwadi. That’s why I want to encourage more people to share their experience and help others to learn. My motto is “Experience before theory”.

Future of the industry has a great potential as technology is having a great impact on young generation’s attention span. Therefore young people are learning less from oldies. As in the older days there were joint families in which the head of the house say the grandfather used to speak, those things are all fracturing and young people are able to learn from the wide range in a very short time. I think the hamburger culture may be prevalent to a fault in today’s times. Let’s compare joint family as a fine dining where you sit down and there is a full nine- course meal – Grandfather, Grandmother, Etc… whereas in a McDonald’s you have a hamburger and go out quicky right after eating your hamburger. So all we have to do is keep giving your knowledge like a hamburger, so instead of making a nice curry out of it by adding sauce and many other things, which the people are not interested in consuming. Instead, all the matter has to be converted into small bites that people can consume.

Leadership

Leadership is simply the act of followers following you, not because you force them but because they want to follow you. Leadership cannot be demanded. Hitler also Mussolini demanded Leadership by coercion. Bad Leaders force leadership on people and demand followership. Good leaders voluntarily get people following them. Hitler was a bad leader and Gandhi was a good leader. Leadership is an interesting topic but the more people are inclined to follow you the better the leader you are. Leading is not something which you do. Following is what people do and the act of that makes you a leader.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]In the past history became the judge of who is the leader or not and today industry bodies and media give the title through awards[/pb_blockquote]

We tend to look at past leaders with rose tinted glasses and think somehow their school must have been good or their college, their company, their city must have been nice when they were a child. Throughout history there are leaders who are follower’s people, these were the people who made difference in history. People who got followers not through force were the people, who were followed because they changed the course of mind that is extreme high form of leadership, whether it is any type of religious leader or Gandhi and many more. They all have learned that there is no perfect leader and even the names that were mentioned by me will have one bad thing about them out of 10 good points. Bad is the matter of opinion but still it didn’t prevent hundreds and thousands of people from following them and those are the type of people to follow in the future also.

Now-a-days the word leadership is been used very loosely compared to the past. As in the past history became the judge of who is the leader or not and today industry bodies and media give the title through awards. So we are the one selecting the leaders whereas in the past, leaders were placed there by the followers. People who are called business leaders are self-titled, nobody has given them the title. They are given that title of business leader because they are occupying a particular chair or a company. A minister is considered to be a political leader, he may be a lousy fellow so can be the business fellow also be a lousy leader. Today we are declaring people leaders rather than letting history judge them as leaders.

We all are missing by electing leaders and not letting them evolve in humanity and learning and we have created an impression that leaders should be arrogant and they must mesmerize people. They know everything whereas the truth is all the great leaders through history were humble and curious of learning. Gandhiji is one of the good example he just kept on experimenting on many things and just simply said I don’t know the answers. I’m learning and if you have different point of view he will say good and I’m just learning and let me study it. The most important qualities are to be humble and curious to learn and the ability of persuading people and let people see the ability to persuade them as a persuader then you are a leader. It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher in a small school or a leader of a national scale. If these three things are missing you can’t be a leader. “Leadership is not about you leading, it is about people following you voluntarily”

Branding the business 

Everybody is set to build up a business, very few are set out to be a brand. Just like very few people in the world become leaders. Branding is a way of standing for something distinctive and not everyone can achieve that and the same happens in market, you want to be another personality, another fountain pen, another pencil. But to produce the same product but distinctive means that you will have to give it a long life. ‘Great brands last long’ like; Coca Cola; PepsiCo, and many more.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote” ]Everybody is set to build up a business, very few are set out to be a brand[/pb_blockquote]

You set out your journeys differently, a person who does branding learns a fix skill just like a person who wants to live long tries to learn yoga or Ayurveda and the other person may go to the gym and have a quick work out. They both produce different result. So branding has discipline like yoga, it’s a tough act we tend to perform branding as though it’s a mark. As the word branding originally came where they use to mark the best cows and buffalos. So you don’t get brands readily Brands are conceived of and executed just like you don’t produce a child to win the noble prize but the noble prize winners have been carefully grown and crafted. So you don’t start a business saying that you will create a brand out of it. But discipline of branding is built into it. Just like discipline of winning a noble prize or a scientific recognition is built in to the child through school and college, adolescent and education then they might become a great brand or not a great brand but if it lives long than it’s a great brand. Brand are the soul and the business is like the body. Business may die but brand lives on.

I think people who consider Business without Branding are like raising child without applying your mind in how to raise a child. Once you have a child you have to devote your time, money, emotion and energy on him. Likewise in business, creating a business as a brand or its product as a brand requires discipline for branding and if you don’t do that it will be like raising an ‘aawara’ child and that’s not what a parent wants to do, it may happen by accident because you didn’t care for the right thing at the right time, so branding is the heart of the business.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote” ]People think people who consider Business without Branding are like raising child without applying your mind in how to raise a child[/pb_blockquote]