Happy New Year: Welcome 2020

-Commander VK Jaitly

Let me start this months topic by wishing you a Happy New Year. May this New Year bring health, happiness and harmony in your life. I am sure, you must have some New Year resolutions in your mind. You would like to achieve some milestones in your life. All of us try for that. That is how life moves on. This is my 91st Monthly Management Mailer. So my plans are to hit a century this year. This has been possible with the the support of thousands and thousands of readers and particularly those who give me feedback also from time to time.

All of us achieve various milestones in our life with the support of our family members, our friends, our colleagues and many other people who collaborate with us. On 2nd of this month, I was at Chennai and had the opportunity of speaking to about 120 academic leaders from 34 countries at NITTTR. It was a great experience for me interacting with so many learned people from across the world. There were 28 academicians from Afghanistan and one of them immediately offered to translate my book ‘We Can! We Can!’ in Pashto and Persian languages. Hindi translation is already available as ‘Safalta ki Udaan’. NITTTR was my 120th academic institution where I conducted my program. So during this year 2020, I wish to reach the goal of 150 academic institutions.

I have been working on three more books for quite some time. But they have been getting delayed and delayed because of so many reasons including my over occupiedness in so many things and therefore, obviously lack of focus on these three projects. One of the book has been titled as ‘101 Great IITians: Dedicated to the Service of the Nation’. The 2nd book has been titled as ‘ Management Through Common Sense’ and 3rd one is in a novel format about how a private company struggles during the economic recession and finally comes out of that. Completing all the three books within one year is a very very tall target but I am sure I should be able to complete one of them and start working on the other two also doing this year.

Some of you may feel that there is too much on my plate during this one year. Yes, it is. In fact, in the last one year, I started an ongoing project which keeps me busy quite a lot. I launched my YouTube channel ‘ExcellenceGuru’ about 5 months back. Within this short period. I made 30 modules; 15 in English and 15 in Hindi and I wish to take it to 100 modules during 2020. Now all this keeps me quite busy all the time. And let me tell you, along with this, I fulfill all my social and family obligations in a reasonably good manner. I do spend a lot of time for my alma-mater IIT Kharagpur and also for some social service. So I pray to God to keep me busy in the year 2020 too. I also wish the same for you to keep you totally busy during 2020.

Your health is most important. So one of the resolution of 2020 should be to take care of your health. If your health is good, you can do wonders and if your health is not ok then you don’t feel like doing anything. So I pray to God to give my readers good health, happiness and they live in harmony with society around them and also the environment where they are living. Let us resolve to contribute our bit to improve our environment in our immediate surroundings to fulfill our social obligation for the future generations. Let us try to contribute our bit to make our country clean, green and pollution free to the extent possible so that we leave a better world for the future generations otherwise they will curse us.

The year 2020 conveys another great message. I am sure you know the difference between Test Cricket and 20-20 format of cricket matches. 20-20 cricket matches have more fun. There is much more energy, enthusiasm and excitement in 20-20 matches compared to slow moving test cricket matches where you keep playing for full five days and then at the end of five days you come to know that the match is a draw. To me, compared to 20-20 matches, the test cricket looks quite boring. Given a chance, I would like to watch or even play a 20-20 match. Similarly, let us resolve that whether we are in an office or we run our own business, we shall execute every project of ours like a 20-20 cricket match. Let there be a great speed of execution. Let there be display of plenty of energy, excitement and enthusiasm and that will give you greater enjoyment too.

It is immaterial whether you are working for someone or in your own company, you are working in a government organisation or a private organisation, working in a profitable organisation or for an NGO; you should always be in a 20-20 mode. Say Good Bye to Test Cricket mode. Get into 20-20 working culture. You got to try to hit a four or a six on the very first ball. You may get just a single or a two but you aimed for a four or a six. Treat every day in your office as a 20-20 match. Perform with full concentration till you are on the crease; say for eight hours. Just imagine if all of us start performing with our full concentration and energy at a 20-20 format speed even our day-to-day routine jobs, the productivity of our nation as a whole will increase manifold and the goal of Indian economy reaching 5 trillions in next 5 years will be definitely achieved.

I do understand that our body needs some rest and rejuvenation too. So I do wish that you must relax on the weekends in addition to going for long holidays or vacations. During those periods of holidaying, live your life King Size. Enjoy and in fact, get into Test Cricket mode. Lie down on the beautiful sand beaches for hours and hours. Stroll on the hills or on the beaches, play beach volleyball, paint, sing with karoke. Chat with your children, spouse and parents for hours and hours. Catch up with networking with friends. The idea is to rejuvenate your mind, body and soul in a way that you are ready for the next 20-20 match style performance in your organisation when you join the office after a couple of weeks of holidays.

So in the year 2020, may I request you to adopt this new style of 20-20 cricket format even for your routine jobs. No dilly dallying anymore. No waste of time anymore. Sochenge (Shall think), Dekehenge (Shall see) will not do in the year 2020. For those who are at the higher echelons of the organization, let all your decisions be at the lightning speed. This type of work culture will take our country to greater heights and we shall be able to compete with the most developed countries of the world in every sphere. Don’t be scared of one odd failure or wrong judgement. You learn more from failures than successes. But enjoy the game and play with full pride, potential and punch.