Ideas Into Action

(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’.)

Last few months, I have been in discussion with various leaders of Industry, trying to understand what is the key to their work life balance and how it helps them perform at their efficient best over decades of their professional experience. One of the result of these discussion was a clear perspective that among attributes like discipline, hard work and perseverance, passion for something that they developed along the way, goes a long way in providing that balance. 

The Birth of an Idea…

      The second result of my interactions was ‘an idea’ to create an informal platform for interaction with a small group of peers and professional friends to discuss ideas, share thoughts and best practices from which all of us can learn. A platform for an informal talk by leaders to focus on the underlying current of creativity and perseverance of the work-life - the primary driving force behind every individual’s success. With informal engagement among peers and friend at its core, the ‘Ideas Into Action’ was born.

Ideas Into Action

      The first ‘Ideas Into Action’ event was held at Hilton EGL - Bengaluru on 29th June, attended by more than a dozen professionals from diverse field, which included CEOs, Infrastructure & Facility Heads, Architectural Product leaders as well as Real Estate & Infrastructure consultancy firm. And as six among them stepped up to share their thoughts, ideas and passion, it became quite clear that the most effective ingredient for the work life balance is individual's passion for something positive and creative.

KEYNOTES: Ideas Into Action

As the evening progressed, most of the attendees agreed that the happiness quotient of a professional working within high stress environment depends upon the individual work-life balance. It became evident that most of the times, work-life balance is rooted in one’s own passion. One of the facility heads, who attended the event, commented. "...never thought that the work-life balance can be achieved through passion / hobbies. It opened my eyes to new thought process."

Personally speaking, it was a great learning process for me as well. One of my colleague in her feedback on the event, described the talks as “a good insight to their (Speaker’s) way of thinking and presenting - was interestingly informative on a lot of topics." One of the attendee even admitted "I would like to come prepared for this the next time’!" and I do hope so since the next event will have lot more discussion, debate and full of fun.

Now I leave you with some of the interesting thoughts from the talks and hope to look forward to seeing you at the next event which is tentatively scheduled to be held the first week of August, 2017.

1) The future is Passion

The happiness quotient of a professional within high stress working environment depends upon the work-life balance. And most of the times, it comes from one’s own passion.

An avid Golfer, Kulwant Singh - CEO of a Food Products Manufacturing firm, talked about how ‘Golfing’ is not about goofing around the greens but it is about character building. As you spend time with your golf partner, you can assess how he / she will perform in stressful situations or how quick decision, he / she can take based on various multiplying and constantly changing factors, even in professional life. The golf is also about being ethical and guarantees that you will know more about a person on a golf course than in office, in a given time. In the end, he added that it is also about physical fitness as one walks through the course for more than four hours.

Anoop Johnson, the young passionate founding partner of India’s most powerful community of 45K of serious bloggers ‘IndiBlogger’ - a community that provides the frame work for most of the social initiatives across India, through daily blog notes about everything and anything. He showcased one bloggers single-handed effort to change the way Passports are made in the country. He said the passion is what drives these serious bloggers, who are as young as 9 years old to 70 years.

The fitness expert - Rahul Agarwal, celebrated young achiever of IIM-A, says that “There is only one right way to live - the ‘fit’ way.” He shared his passion for ‘Fitness’ through asking the inevitable question, what does fitness do? Among the desire to ‘look’ and ‘feel’ good; have high energy; resilience; long life; the most important factor, according to the speaker, is improving the quality of life, specially so, since it provides the perfect and healthy foundation for the life after work. However ‘being fit’ is not something that one can learn from books or theorize, it needs persistence, discipline and most importantly time. It is a small price to pay for healthy professional life as well as most important part of one's retirement plan. So Rahul recommends the investment...

2) Future is Learning

Venture capitalist by day - Amit Somani is a voracious reader and writer by his passion for learning. He started with numbers like 1404, 140M & 2007 as he talked about 'hacking' reading. He talked about how ‘one’ of his blogposts gathered 250K views and put him on the road to serious blogging. He says that the reading is one thing that can bring in change in the right way. He listed out most of the powerful sites that helps a reader to know what to read next like Goodreads and Amazon. He swears by Kindle and loves to scour various Podcasts, Blinklist, Slideshare and Audible to keep up with reading

Amit Gupta, a doer whose passion is "action and creation" proposes ‘living mindfully in the moment’ as the way of life and that’s what his constant endeavor is To live life in full cognizance of the present moment ‘now’. This ‘focus’ is what drives many successful individuals and most of the times it comes from being in the meditative state. It doesn't require a state of stillness and a tree necessarily. He talked about the importance of being in equanimity and try to balance your mind in a manner that gets you closer to your own self and internalize things rather than externalizing. The most powerful tool to really live is to learn to stay in the mode of inner exploration and becoming responsible for every action.

3) The Future is 'Wellness'

The fresh graduate, armed with on campus job placements, wants to work from the agile working spaces that align with his/her attitude of working for passion, rather than the sole need of earning money. He/she is looking for an environment that aids, rather than inhibiting their ‘passion’ – an environment that sustains the ‘wellness’ within.

Though Agile Work Spaces (AWS) is the capability to work from anywhere and everywhere, without any fixed seating for the young user, ‘wellness’ is hard to define in absolute terms. It is individualistic and personal, however the ingredients that make ‘wellness’ are understandable on its own. It is holistic mix of Freedom, Passion, Collaboration, Learning, sharing among friends and peers within a sustainable and creative environment as well as the need of a community to belong to. That is probably where the future of creativity is moving - Shashidhar Sharma (Cushman & Wakefield)

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' was held in collaboration with Edward Kumar (Bene) and T P S Raman (Toli) along with Shashidhar Sharma (Cushman & Wakefield). The next session will be held by first week of August at Hilton Hotel - EGL, Bangalore.

Second Session of 'Ideas Into Action - II'