Ideas Into Action - Session II

(IIA is an informal platform for interaction with a small group of peers and professional friends to discuss ideas, share thoughts and best practices from which we all can learn. A time to spend a relaxed evening sharing thoughts, converting ‘Ideas’ into ‘Action’.)

From birth of an Idea, in the first week of May to 29th June when the first session of “Ideas Into Action” was held, the event has organically grown to become a place, where unique and inspiring people come together. An evening to catch up with long time friends or make new ones, share some thoughts and participate in discussions that makes you think.

The second session of ‘Ideas Into Action’ at Hilton Hotel on 10th Aug, was attended by more than 20 guests which pushed our self-prescribed limit of keeping the group small, to its outer limit. However, we are also very grateful to guests like Malahar Pinnelli (MD – PFSWeb Technologies) who joined in for a short duration from the other side of town. 

The format of this interactive evening was collaborative discussion based on the pre-selected topics by the invitees, which proved to be quite effective. The various discussions provided a new perspective on the way we work, on our thoughts about social change and sports as a sustainable profession. However, personally I believe, the most powerful session was the 'Turning Point' in which the guests shared their own ‘defining’ moments of life.

Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) an alibi for Personal Social Responsibility (PSR)?

During one of my meetings with my friend Davinder Jain (Bhartiya City), who introduced me to his colleague Lovish Tekwani, (GM Marketing). Lovish passion for trekking in Himalaya goes hand in hand with his commitment to social cause. He shared a video of one trek to Chandra Taal, in which he and his friends armed with dozens of sacks, ended up cleaning the whole trash around the beautiful lake. That video set the tone of our first discussion - To figure out whether the young generation is taking the easy way out of social responsibility, through CSR.

I thought so, but most of the guests had a different perspective on the same. They felt that CSR is corporate’s responsibility and does not dilute the sense of Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) of young executive in the office. In fact, Devanshi Patel (ANSR) was quite clear that the awareness amongst our youngster is far better than within the old guards. Amit Gupta (Group CEO – Asianet News Media) and Vivek Kharia (Principle – Designtude) felt that the younger generation is more responsive to their social responsibility and just like Lovish, they find their own unique ways and means to do their part.

Anoop Johnson (Founder – IndiBlogger) and Mohan Kumar (Facility – Open Text) reiterated that personal initiative and motivation is important. CSR activity should be escalated into PSR and Jagannath Rao – Facilities (Alsbridge) summed up the sentiment of the group that the enforcement of the process taken up for the activity is equally important.

The Turning Point - The things that have changed my life

Most of us can remember one moment of life which changed the way we think or react. The idea behind the topic was to hear what others have to say and how they coped afterwards. To the set the ball rolling, we started with a discussion about the turning point in the life cycle of Homo sapiens, mainly from the evolution perspective. Mankind passed through numerous defining moments of our histroy e.g fire. But in my opinion, probably the three events that helped Homo Sapiens to reach to the top of the food chain, because...

1) We came down from trees and stood up

2) We accidentally dropped raw meet into the fire

3) We learned to speak

With this introduction, the floor was open to share ‘Turning Points’ of one’s life. The session was a revelation as Cecil (Cushman & Wakefield), Devanshi, Amit K Sharma (Target), Amit Gupta, Dhananjaya & Anil (Global Facility Dell/EMC2) as well as me, shared our defining moments. The discussion turned out to be a therapeutic session as it unraveled our deep inner knots. So deep and personal that I feel that it should not be shared in a public post like this.

Is Sports an Idle Pastime?

From childhood, we kept hearing from our parents, guardians and well-wishers that sports should be a pastime rather than the mainstay of life. However, defying the normal convention, we had among us a professional runner, Dharmendra, an IIM - Lucknow Alumni, who left his lucrative post at KPMG, to become a sports coach. This discussion which happened standing around with dinner plates, was ably supported by inspiring inputs from passionate swimmer guests like Dhananjaya and Anand (Designtude). Dhananjaya said his passion for swimming was triggered by his father’s insistence, who basically threw him in the deep end of the swimming pool, one summer season during childhood.

Amit (Target) said that the best part of playing a game or following your passion is the fact that not only it maintains your ‘Work life Balance’ in our stressful social and professional environment, it also makes you happy. The majority of us agreed that sports can be rewarding in both ways- financially as well as mentally. Vasu (Toli) added that sports is not only about physical involvement in sports, running, swimming etc., it is also gives you your own time.

At the end of the discussion, most of us agreed that the times have changed, one can survive on sports as mainstay of life. Dharmendra summed up the discussion with his thought that if you don’t have lots of need, then there are many ancillary sports activities that can sustain a sports enthusiast.

END NOTE: Before I sign off, I must appreciate my colleague, Manubha Sharma for diligently collating overflowing thoughts and ideas into word form, so that it can be shared with you all. I am also grateful to Lovish for sharing his Chandrataal trek Video at the event, specially so, as he took time and the effort to edit and prepare the same to fit into our timelines for the event. Thank you!

And thank you every one for making this IIA Session II special with your presence and thoughts.

Recommended Books

Motivational:

• ‘The Last Lecture’ by Randy Pausch
• ‘Don’t Sprint the Marathon’ by Dr. V Raghunathan’s (Shared by Amit Gupta)

New Trends - Artificial Intelligence:

• ‘Deep Thinking’ by Gary Kasparov

Management:

• ‘Outliers’ by Malcom Gladwell

Note: If you would like to share a passion that is major part of your work life balance, please leave a message to be invited for the next session.

The First Session of 'Ideas Into Action - I'

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The Event 'Ideas Into Action' is held in collaboration with Edward Kumar (Bene), T P S Raman (Toli), Sandeep Singh (Regent Lighting) and Shashidhar Sharma (Cushman & Wakefield)