Change

After all, it would not do any justice, if I did not justify as to why I had chosen it as the title of my Blog. Frankly though it was an impulsive decision, over the past months it made complete sense and felt most appropriate to have selected it as the title. Well, it was said to be the most constant thing in ones’ lives.

ICICI Lombard has come my way and I am brought to ease by choosing it as a frame of reference while writing about the topic. ICICI Lombard is a large organisation, but at the same time it behaves as though it is just one person. It can be said without any doubt that it is an epitome for “Change” and it is definitely “Ever Changing”.

Reminiscing the past of over one year at ICICI Lombard, it some times surprises me that I had considered various aspects as priority at different points of time. Out of the blue one day I get a call in the morning from my superior asking how much of the new product I would sell that month. Now keep in mind that this new product is totally new and was never sold by my team before. We have to be so ready and alert to accept change and to cope with it that we would again get a call in the evening of the same day asking how many numbers we have already sold of this new products!

PCV, Motor Secure, Cross Sell, Health, Retention are the five line of products which were introduced during the past one year (in that order), while the man power to handle these products still remains the same (in fact it just got smaller). The other day one of my dealers gave me a call and asked me if there was any problem with the “Administration” at ICICI Lombard. He got to hear from the market that there is a huge churn going on at ICICI Lombard – he kind of sounded as though it was a negative thing. Little did he know that churnings such as these is so common in the organisation that we hardly know when it came and became the natural course of actions.

While that was about the line of products that came by, let me also tell about new processes that get implemented every now and then. There is on an average at least one mail ever day that finds its way to my inbox, informing us the change in the way we do business from that moment on. I wonder how my friend at the Dealer would feel if came to hear of this in the market.

I wonder which of those mails is waiting dormant for me in the inbox when I reach office tomorrow morning, to open, accept and to change!

Isabel Vs Jezebel

While trying to cope up with the added responsibilities of taking care of a newly born baby, comes up another daunting task of naming the baby. Keeping various rules of naming the child in mind one sets off on a journey of a kind. Rules such as: to avoid names which could sound funny in certain languages; names that could have negative connotations while you refer to their origin; names that your spouse might not like; names that your close relatives might not agree to and so on and so forth.

A similar journey we took after our daughter was born. I downloaded close to a thousand names from the internet and shared it with my wife to short list few of them. Among the ones that she short listed was the beautiful name, “Isabel”. It means “God’s Promise”. We both loved the name and were happy that we had finalised on a good name so soon. Even the internet ratings agreed with us that Isabel was a popular days over the past few decades.

In history while most of us were unaware, there lived a woman by name Jezebel. This lady after almost 3000 years influenced us in naming our baby as Isabel.

Jezebel was a crafty, malicious, revengeful, and cruel; a queen who is branded as being the first great instigator of persecution against the saints of God. She is also mentioned in the chapter of Revelation and is meant to be synonymous for a wicked woman.

At the same time Isabel as such is not mentioned in the Bible. But the name Elizabeth, of which Isabel is a variant, is mentioned in the Bible.

What does all this has to do with us naming our daughter Isabel? Everything! Unfortunately for my daughter, she was born to south Indian parents, with Malayalam as the mother tongue. In Malayalam, Jezebel is pronounced as “Yesabel”.

Both of us fought with all our relatives to sell the point that Yesabel mentioned in the Malayalam Bible is not Isabel but Jezebel. Confused? Well that is how first our relatives felt and in due course of time they confused us and convinced us in changing my daughter’s name.

Not aware of any of this chaos, all along Laura Thomas was relaxing on her monther’s arms. Yes eventually after evaluating few names with settled down with “Laura,” a non-biblical name. Meaning of which very few of my relatives would know, therefore fewer the problems that would arise.

Laura is from the word “Laurel”. It means Honour or Victory.

With prayers, I remain. Have a great day!

See you at the top ! . ?

How many are we in India? 110 crore?

Let us say around 5% live in urban cities and therefore at least one tenth of them are working in Professional fields. So that is close to 55 lakh professionals working in various organizations. Let us not have any disputes with that; if the actual figure is different – please relate that to this.

Isn’t it the aim of each living creature to succeed? It isn’t. At least 10% among them are just working for the sake of working and are so lazy that even while they retire, they would have just grown one post higher or may be at the same post or probably retired early (through voluntary retirements).

So that leaves us with around 49.5 lakh professionals. Let us not further bifurcate this lot else it will just come down to one person who is the most successful one – then there would be no need for me to spend all this time typing this.

If, after reading this far, you are wondering why I considered only the urban lot and whether there would not be any one from the rural population in professional field, I pity you.

Do only few among these 49.5 lakh professionals get to the top because each one of them is different? Yes. They are different. But in what ways are they different? Well that is precisely why I have been writing all this.

Can one who spends just 8 hours at work and work for only 5 days a week, be better, than one who works close to 16 hours or more every day and also might drive down to the office on a week end? May be.

Can one who has just passed +2 be better than one who has many PhDs? May be.

Can one who is not planning his daily work schedule and following it with discipline be better than one does plan his work and follow it with complete discipline? May be.

Can one who is not planning his daily work schedule in line with his goal of being successful and follow it with discipline, be better, than one who does plan his work according to his goal of being successful and follow it with complete discipline? Never!!