Author: S Ramesh Shankar

Born in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, I have been brought up in different parts of India. Graduate in chemistry and post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations. Have been a HR practitioner for 38 years in the industry and have experience in working in steel , automobiles, FMCG and engineering industry. Was head of HR for Siemens in South Asia based out of Mumbai till March 2019. Currently founded hrishti - joy forever, a social enterprise to give back to society and work as Chief Joy Officer.

Learn from the past, Create your future

The new year eve ,is always an exciting time of the year, where we have an opportunity, to reflect on the past and create the future of our choice. All of us ,go through a lot of ups and downs ,during the course of the year. This happens in our personal as well as professional life.

The new year is a great opportunity to reflect on the past, learn from it and move on ,to create the future we want, for ourselves. It is like driving a car ,on the highway. While, we need to look ahead at the highway and drive safely, the rear view mirror, helps us to check for any hinderances ,on the sides or any traffic from behind, before we overtake or take a turn.

Life is no different. It is almost like driving your car on the highway. The new year gives us ,an immense opportunity ,to look at the rear view mirror and learn from our successes and failures ,of the past. While successes help us rejoice, the failures give us important lessons in life.

All good things in life ,make us happy and not so good things, make us sad. Life is always a mixture of, good and bad. We need to cherish the happy memories ,of the past year and forget the unpleasant ones. It may also help, if we learn to forgive people ,who hurt us during the last year and pray for their good ,in the new year.

We do realise that neither forgetting the past nor forgiving people who hurt us ,is easy in life. However, the best way ,is to learn lessons from the mistakes we did and resolve not to repeat them ,in the future. Forgiving may not be easy but it may help us to rise ,above the ordinary.

I have never believed in a long list of new year resolutions, at any time. This is because , the longer the list, the more likely we are going to break them. I always believed in making one resolve to myself and trying to live upto it. It could be as simple as a walk every single day in the new year.

I am a born optimist in life. I always believe, that the future will always be brighter than the past. But, just believing in it ,may not be good enough. We need to work ,to create the future ,through systematic planning and diligent execution.

We need to realise ,that we are the masters of our own destiny ,in life and work. We can neither blame our family or friends ,in life nor our colleagues at work ,for not achieving our dreams and aspirations.

It may be useful to remember ,that brooding over the past may not help us ,in creating our future. The lessons from the past ,may help us to prevent similar mistakes ,in life and work.

Today is the time to sit back, reflect and chart your future.

Wish you all ,the best of everything ,in the new year.

S Ramesh Shankar

31st Dec 2024

When hurt does not hurt anymore

All of us go through moments of joy and sadnesses in our lives. Today was one of those days when I experienced a lot of hurt and sadness. I should admit that tears flowed from my eyes, unconsciously when I was recalling the incident.

Under normal circumstances, we as humans ,tend to retaliate with our words or actions ,when we are hurt. This could be by shouting back or writing back or even using the power of silence or non verbal communication channels.

We can understand and deal with hurt, if one can correlate the cause and effect of an action. However, when someone hurts you for no reason ,then you feel sad. It could also be for no fault of yours. Let me illustrate this point with a few examples.

While working in the corporates, I have been privileged to work under great leaders ,almost right through my career. I may have hurt many of my team members knowingly or unknowingly but my seniors mentored me to realise my mistakes and apologise and learn from these actions, always.

As I grew into a team leader, I also tried to practise this quality, learnt from my seniors. I would encourage the senior employees to forgive, forget and move on, when they are hurt by their junior colleagues.

One may argue that hurt is hurt and it does not matter ,if it comes from a senior or a junior. This is factually true. However, if we are willing to reflect on the incident and contextualise it ,in the organisational environment, we may realise that ,when our juniors hurt us, it may be their inability to understand the impact of their actions or our inability to groom them and develop them ,to deal with such situations.

The moment we are able to get out of this context and put ourselves as a neutral umpire, we realise that the cause of the hurt could be attributed to the leader ,rather than the team member, who insulted someone.

Let me illustrate this point ,with another example. The cricket teams of two leading cricket playing countries ,were playing a competitive final. Since it was a close game, the temperatures were running high and on some sensitive and close decisions of the umpire ,a lot of sledging and misbehaviour ,was seen on the ground. This continued for some time and in the end, resulted in fist fights and physical violence.

In such a situation, while the junior players may have indulged in the acts of misbehaviour , the onus of discipline and coaching the team ,lies with the captains of the two teams. As they were mute spectators to this incident, it was for the umpires to intervene and diffuse the situation.

Life is no different. We as parents or elders in the family or leaders in the organisation or the community have to take the onus of responsibility, of dealing with any errant behaviour by the youngsters in our domain. The accountability to mentor and coach ,lies with the seniors and not the juniors, who may have indulged in such acts of indiscipline.

I realised and learnt a great lesson today in life. The act of forgiving and taking onus of responsibility for the behaviour of my team members is my accountability. So it does not matter who is involved in such incidents, the seniors have to reflect and change themselves ,so that such acts do not recur in families, organisations or communities.

Let me change myself before I change the world.

S Ramesh Shankar

16th Jan 2024

Forget the past, look at the future

Someone sent me a nice quote today morning, which read as “The past is in our head and the future is in our hands.” I felt this quote was very insightful. We spend most of our life worrying about the past, rather than working for our future.

Let us reflect on our school and college life. We spend most of the time regretting about not doing well in a particular subject or grade, rather than preparing for the next one.

Similarly in organisations, both individuals and teams spend more time discussing about opportunities missed rather than the possibilities ahead. We need to remember that the past is not going to gift us the future. The past is history but the future is a mystery, which we need to resolve ,by our hard work and commitment to our goals.

Life is no different. We tend to spend more time worrying about about past conflicts or misunderstandings in family, community or society. We do not take the leap into the future. This requires courage to forget the past and craft our future.

I am not stating in any way ,that history is not important or that, we do not learn from failures. But, what I am trying to convey is that, time spent to look behind should definitely be less than the time invested in planning the future.

We can learn from our mistakes as individuals or teams. But, our ability to make the future fool proof ,will drive us to our dreams and goals . Past can at best be like a mirror, to learn the best lessons from our life gone by. But if we continue to look at the mirror, we may not look at the world ahead of us and people who will make it happen for us.

Let the past continue to be history and we learn from it. But let us learn to create a future through our actions today ,so that history does not repeat itself. Past can be a guide for the future and not a benchmark.

The best examples in this space is from the field of sports. Have we ever seen a sportsperson spending too much time regretting the loss in a game or missing a medal in a tournament. The best of sportspersons may learn lessons from their past but will focus on the future from the very next day.

Even if we look at team sports, teams may learn lessons from the past but will focus more on future strategies. The past can at best be a guide but the future is definitely in our hands.

We waste a lot of time regretting our past and thereby demotivating ourselves ,more than anyone else. If we spend more time time in planning and working for the future, the past may fade away in our memory and future will beckon us like sunshine in our lives.

Let us create a future of our choice since it’s in our hands.

S Ramesh Shankar

12th Jan 2024