6 Steps towards lasting Serenity

    

           Mind Peace plays an important role in our lives. Various factors affect our Mind, it is important  how do we control our Mind to attain Mind Peace. 

    When one has a mental peace, you might feel:

• Feel Energetic & Positive 
• Unruffled with day-to-day worries 
• Problem solving mindset 
• Increases productivity 
• Being healthy 

          Finding a mind peace is not challenging as it looks ; you can mind peace by 

1. One can't control all situations, better to accept it and move on

• Life is unpredictable, not always you can control every situation
• Try handle the situation the best of one's ability
• Not over think on what happened
• Accept your thoughts and emotions is an effective strategy 

 2. Forgiving self and others:

• It is always a hard feeling when someone hurts you (or) treats you unfairly. Sometimes it goes beyond our control with a direct impact on thoughts, anger, depression with lack of sleep. 
• Forgiveness of others could do even more for you than others. 
• The early you forgive helps distress with fewer mental health symptoms 

   3. Not to take life so seriously:

• It is hard tooth that life is only temporary, we are all species living on earth
• Not sure how long one can live, so there is no point taking things so seriously
• What we believe wrong today could turn out to right tomorrow, so live in positive spirit irrespective how hard life hits back

   4. Focus on now than past or future:

• We always worry by thinking situations happened in the past, what will happen in future. It is an art of controlling our mind to be in present, it is hard but with practice it is possible on how to control our mind 
• Make time for yourself, retrospect each situation to continue learn from mistakes 

  5. Connecting to Mother earth 

• Natural environments or parks can ease emotional distress and foster feelings of inner calm and peace of mind 
• Relax at a near by beach or a shore 
• Go on a travel 
• Get your hands dirty with gardening to move focus away 

6.  Being calm & composed in tough situations 

• Our peace of mind depends on how we react to a situation. All successful leaders excel in handling the tough situations. 
• Staying calm and composed helps in better decision making than making things worse 
• Step back and see the big picture rather than to get stuck the details of what is happening 
• During challenging times , leader should communicate openly, transparently as effective communication is critical 
• Be Honest to yourself, taking right decision even it hurts

        It is important to have mind peace to achieve successful life. Once we understand the root cause of your anxiety, you can begin to make deep and lasting changes for healing. There are so many resources for you to learn how to live a more peaceful, joyful and non-anxious life.  

        

                  

One Day Trip from Bangalore to Ramanagara

             I took a week break after very hectic work schedule for more than 6 months. It was busy school season for my son who is studying 11th CBSE, my wife and i don't want to disturb his school. We decided not to make advanced plan, rather decided to go out with an adhoc travel plan each day. This is how we started our Bangalore to Ramanagara plan on Friday - 18/Oct. 

           10AM:  It was a cloudy morning; we left after breakfast at 10AM from Bangalore. We took nice road (we always enjoy the drive) with Mysore Road exit, connected to Mysore express highway to reach Ramangara ; about 45 KMs in total, took about 2 hours to reach Ramanagara.  I wasn't aware that Mysore express highway toll charges flat 170 Rs. irrespective of what exit you take. I strongly recommend, not to take Mysore Express Highway rather service road is equally good to save 170 Rs. 

          12:30 PM:  After reaching Ramanagara (also famous called Sholay shooting place) , this place is surrounded by beautiful hills with big rocks. We directly went to Ramadevara Betta a famous hill area. This is off the highway before going to Ramanagara Town. After the highway, it was a bit narrow road, after paying parking/entrance ticket you can drive further inside until you reach a final point where we parked our car and started walking. It was a long walk roughly 2KMs with more than 300 steps. Me and My wife never experienced trekking, initially we thought it was difficult to trek, but we thoroughly enjoyed trekking, we not only reached the Sriram template, but we went further high till the top of the mountain. The trekking for quite adventures with scenic beauty. Climb on the vantage points near the temple to see the panoramic views of the place dotted by huge boulders where Sholay was shot.

                         

                    2:30 PM: We returned back, had a decent veg lunch at one of the restaurants next to high way. Post lunch we went to "Big banyan tree" or "dodda alada Mara" as it is known in Kannada. It is the second largest Banyan tree in the country. The road we took from Ramanagara to Big Banyan Tree was quite scenic surrounded by may farming fields. strongly suggest take good map route to try this scenic drive from Ramanagara to Big Banyan Tree. After we reached big banyan tree, we parked our car next to the park without any fee. We spent decent 1 hour taking pictures with aerial roots of big banyan tree. 

                5PM Return to Bangalore 

Took Reference pictures from : traveltwosome.com 

Are you surrounded by Master Minds to excel in what you do?

 

Very thought-provoking Ted video from Mr. Atul Gawande – A surgeon by profession on why coaching/mentoring matters not just at the beginning of the career but its importance in achieving excellence in what we do. (It is a short ted video, complete video link is available under references section).

A coach/mentor could be an SME, a manager or a boss, colleague, friend, can be anyone you chose. It is important to have right mentors/master minds surrounded for one’s success.  Having a good coach to provide a more accurate picture of our reality, to instill positive habits of thinking, and to break our actions down and then help us build them back up again.    

As Atul explained in his video, as a mentee it doesn’t matter you are now, how good you are going to be that really matters. It helps in achieving long term success in one’s career.  

What a Great Master Mind/Mentor/Coach does?

•          A good observer
•          Gives accurate picture of reality
•          Be with you during challenging situations
•          Instill positive habits of thinking

References

http://t.ted.com/aUKQLte - Complete video from Mr. Atul Gawande

How easy or difficult to define Roles & Responsibility of an IT Program Manager in the current IT era?

How easy or difficult to define Roles & Responsibility of an IT Program Manager in the current IT era?

Program Manager plays a very important role in transforming a company’s strategy into reality. Every IT program is different in its size, complexity, stakeholder involvement, time critical with a direct impact on organization growth/reputation. It would require a program manager to have right skill, ability and knowledge for a successful program implementation, it is not necessary every single skill/responsibility is well defined in R&R of a program manager.

I am sharing the below key insights from my 2+ decades of IT Project/Program management experience that you don’t find them in a program manager R&R template.

a.    Ground Rules:

Every program needs a set of ground rules to be defined at the beginning of a program. It is important rather critical for a program manager to ensure these ground rules are being followed by all team members across the program without dropping a ball. In some programs, these ground rules are closely tracked in the beginning of the program, slowly ignored at a later part of the program.   

e.g. Sprint governance, team updating daily status/effort in jira without reminders, team responding to queries/emails promptly, updating WSR on time, version management, following the right process with no deviations etc.

b.    Mastery of Detail:

More mission critical programs demand a program manager to know granular details of a program. It is a default expectation from a program manager to answer all key questions in both internal and external leadership meetings with no/minimal dependency on the next level of PMs/Leads. A good program manager knows how to get these details without spending long hours.

e.g. Effectively managing scrum of scrums, being a good listener, asking the right set of questions, using collaborative tools such as MS Teams, Jira for better cross channel communication etc. 

c.     Diversified Knowledge

It is not necessary a program manager should master in every area, but the diversified knowledge across the domains (i.e. Business Domain, Technical, QA, Architecture, DevOps, Cloud tech etc.) always come handy in successfully executing a program. It helps the program manager better planning by considering all inter dependencies, decision making, identifying the risks with a clear mitigation etc.  

e.g. High level understanding of program business domain, attending DevOps/Cloud workshops, attending technical architecture walkthroughs with the team etc.

d.    Empathetic

Empathy is another key area often don’t find it in R&R of a program manager. It is an essential feature for a program manager to possess as it enables them to build strong relationships with their team members, internal and external stakeholders. Being empathetic helps in understanding the feelings, perspectives, and needs of their team members, leading to better communication, teamwork, and program outcomes.  By building strong relationships with their team members and stakeholders, program managers can create a positive work environment that fosters teamwork, innovation, and program success.

 

e.g. Being responsible for team work life balance, taking right decision making in the interest of the complete team, taking complete accountability for a program success or failure.

The views expressed here are my own and do not represent my organization.         

Please do share program manager skills that we often don’t see in the R&R template from your experience.