This post is copy-paste from an email I received, originally written by an anonymous writer – most likely someone who works or was working with Volvo. I thank my friend and the long list of chain emailers leading back to the anonymous writer, for sharing these profound thoughts with me – what I call “Words of Wisdom”.

It’s been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It’s a rule.

Globalize processes have caused in us (all over the world) a general sense of searching for immediate results. Therefore, we have come to possess a need to see immediate results. This contrasts greatly with the slow movements of the Swedish. They, on the other hand, debate, debate, debate, hold x quantity of meetings and work with a slowdown scheme. At the end, this always yields better results.

Said in another words:
1. Sweden is about the size of San Pablo , a state in Brazil .
2. Sweden has 2 million inhabitants.
3. Stockholm , has 500,000 people.
4. Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux, Nokia are some of its renowned companies. Volvo supplies to the NASA.

The first time I was in Sweden , one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn’t say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, “Do you have a fixed parking space? I’ve noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot.” To which he replied, “Since we’re here early we’ll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don’t you think so?” Imagine my face.

Nowadays, there’s a movement in Europe named Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week. Basically, the movement questions the sense of “hurry” and “craziness” generated by globalization, fueled by the desire of “having in quantity” (life status) versus “having with quality”, “life quality” or the quality of being”.

French people, even though they work only 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 29 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity been driven up by 20%. This slow attitude has brought forth the US ‘s attention, pupils of the fast and the “do it now!”. This no-rush attitude doesn’t represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, perfection, with more attention to detail and less stress. It means reducing rejects and wastage. It means reestablishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the “now”, present and concrete, versus the “global”, undefined and anonymous future. It means taking humans’ essential values, the simplicity of living. It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do.

It’s time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.

In the movie, Scent of a Woman, there’s a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, “I can’t, my boyfriend will be here any minute now”. To which Al responds, “A life is lived in an instant”. Then they dance to a tango.

Many of us live our lives running behind time, but we only reach it when we die of a heart attack or in a car accident rushing to be on time. Others are so anxious of living the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists. We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment.

As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.

Congratulations for reading till the end of this message. There are many who will have stopped in the middle so as not to waste time in this globalized world.

If you have seen the latest OSCAR nominated movie “Up In The Air” or have the read the book, the following except from it will seem familiar. It is a motivational speech that Ryan (George Clooney) gives in the movie called “What’s in your backpack?”.

How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home… I want you to stuff it all into that backpack.

Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office… and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag.

Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.

It gets you thinking, doesn’t it? About our lives and what’s really important to us.

We are the modern day nomads. We relocate easily, away from our families and friends. We go where our jobs take us. We move in pursuit of a better way of life. We live many lives in just one lifetime.

In all that rush, let’s talk a moment to stop to look inside our backpacks. Have we packed everything we hold dear to us? Or have we packed in too much?

Continued from Part 1: Stress in Leadership Roles – Identify It

TURN-DOWN

When you were younger, Mom and Dad most likely taught you the phrase “JUST SAY NO” as a response to being peer-pressured into something you knew was bad. As you grow older and take more control of your own choices and consequences, you start to forget this rule. Suddenly your “NO” becomes “YES” or “OK” even when you know full well that you’ll probably regret making the decision later. One of the most common myths is that leaders who look and act busy must be important and competent. However, effective leaders usually master the art of working smarter, not harder. Conquering this step is a little tricky, because it requires subjective analysis on your part to decide what to delete from your schedule. Before enforcing the JUST SAY NO policy, make a list of the general categories requiring time during your day, which may include work, family, church, sports, vacation, etc. Rewrite these categories with the first one being the most important to you and use this list as a guide for every decision you make when scheduling new activities. Your list will probably be different from others who demand your time, but the point is to have one and stick to it. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish by saying NO to activities on the bottom of your priority list.

RELAX

Why list this step separately from SLEEP? Sleep and relaxation are really two different activities. Sometimes normal amounts of sleep do not leave us feeling relaxed the following morning, but it is possible to relax during the day without sleeping. This is a step that is best accomplished by scheduling “rest breaks” for your mind. For example, someone who finds reading as a relaxing pastime may schedule time to read for fun at certain points in the day (ex. During lunch break). Sleep quiets your body and relaxation calms your mind, but both feed off each other. Sometimes it is difficult to discern whether you need more sleep or more relaxation time. Before trying to analyze the situation, just begin scheduling consistent times for each step and watch how your body responds. As your body adjusts to YOUR new schedule, you will start to associate specific stress-induced symptoms with certain behaviors.

EXERCISE

This step is often the hardest, because you tend to group exercise in the same category as grocery shopping or cleaning house. You don’t necessarily enjoy doing it, but it just has to be done. However, there are many benefits to following and maintaining a consistent exercise program, one of which is stress reduction. By now you’ve probably noticed that the first three concepts involve controlling our daily schedules, and exercise is no exception. Motivate yourself to make it a regular part of your life by scheduling specific days and times for exercise. Long-term exercise not only improves physical health, but also mental and emotional health. In many cases, physical symptoms of stress are directly related to changes in mental/emotional health. 3 The key to sticking to your exercise program is to pick activities you enjoy. Think of exercise as “scheduled recreation time” rather than a chore.

In addition to reducing stress, these four words share something else in common: they are verbs requiring ACTION on our part, not merely emotions or state-of-mind. Action distinguishes leaders from the rest of the group. Remember that taking on leadership roles also means taking on responsibility as a role model. Stress-reduction will not only benefit you, but also your organization. As a Toastmaster, you seek to improve public speaking skills, but that is only the beginning. You also learn to apply the communication and leadership principles to every aspect of your life. The sad part about stress is that you cannot eliminate it, but you can control how you respond to it. Rather than spending wasteful hours trying to eliminate every problem in life, think about your priorities and place them ahead of your problems. Live each day one hour at a time according to your priority schedule, but still anticipate interruptions. You only have one life to live and as a leader, you have power to improve the quality of your own life and the lives of your team members.

Part 1 of 2

STRESS – You hear this word a lot lately; so much so that it seems to be an excuse for everything that goes wrong in life. Take this sample conversation:

“Hey there, how’s it going?”
“Oh, okay I guess. I had a pretty stressful week at work, and I’m just really tired.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I had several stressful things happen this week and it seems like my mind is always thinking about something. And even when I’m finally able to rest, I still worry that there is something I forgot to do!”
“Wow, I can relate to that completely! It’s so frustrating too, because I slept 10 hours last night and still feel tired this morning…”

Sound familiar? If you are a leader of an organization, whether at work, home, sports, volunteer activities, etc. you probably have learned to accept stress as a necessary evil in your daily routine. But does this have to be the case? A recent article published by the American Heart Association says that more research evidence suggests a relationship between the risk of cardiovascular disease and environmental/psychosocial factors. Factors contributing to stress may include job strain, social isolation and personality traits. While there is not conclusive evidence identifying stress as an “independent” risk factor for cardiovascular disease, it can contribute to high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, smoking, physical inactivity and overeating. Even with rapid advancements in medical care, cardiovascular disease still remains in the top three causes for death worldwide according to statistics from the World Health Organization.

Understanding the problems related to stress is pretty straightforward, but how do you find a simple solution for reducing stress in your life? Go to the self-help section of the bookstore and you will find a plethora of how-to-reduce-stress-in-your-life books. While most of these books present good tips based on quality research, you often end up adding more stress to your day just finding time to sit down and read the book! Unfortunately there are very few things in life under your complete control, mainly the actions of people and events that happen to you. You can however, control to an extent some of the people and events you allow to affect daily life.

Open up your PDA or personal calendar and take a look at all the people, places and times that you have willingly entered into your schedule for this week. Being a strong and effective leader requires careful time management. Since you have become so skilled at managing your schedule, why not take the same approach for managing stress?

To make it easy to remember, take the word S-T-R-E-S-S and develop an acronym:

S – Sleep, T – Turn-down, R – Relax, E – Exercise, S – Sleep, S – Sleep

SLEEP

Notice that the word “stress” has three S’s followed by the same word – sleep. Why? If you can learn to conquer this step, you are half-way toward winning the battle against stress. The hardest part about this step is that sleep and stress affect each other in a cyclic pattern. Worry from stress causes sleep loss, and lost sleep increases stress levels and the cycle continues. How do you break it? Try putting it into practical terms. You typically work five days a week for eight hours a day at the office, and you receive compensation for your time spent. If you must take off work for personal time, you compensate those hours in some other way, such as using sick/vacation hours or working overtime. Why not take the same approach with sleep? Most studies show that adults need about 8 hours of sleep per night, depending on age and gender. A daily work schedule might be 8am to 5pm with lunch break between 12 and 1pm. In the same way, develop a daily sleep schedule for eight hours (ex. 10pm to 6am on weekdays) and enforce it. Now let’s say you have a project deadline that requires more time outside of your normal 40-hour/week work schedule to complete. Your supervisor may ask you to stay overtime until the project is complete, and take off early that Friday. In the same way, tailor your sleep schedule accordingly to make room for unexpected activities (ex. 9pm to 5am or 11pm to 7am). Finally, one day you start feeling some stress-induced symptoms: headaches, fatigue, higher blood pressure, etc. Imagine that these symptoms are the body’s way of saying, “You have an important project that will require extra stress management. You need to sleep overtime this week.” Which part of your schedule will you cut to get those overtime hours in?

Part 2: Stress in Leadership Roles – Defeat It

Have you ever asked your boss for a raise, or a friend for a big favour, and been apologetic about your request? What happened? You got a refusal. What else could you get? If you were enthusiastic, sure of what you had asked for, taken his consent for granted, the result would have been favourable. People find it very hard to refuse someone who takes their consent for granted.

If you are planning to get something big, try this method; first make a strong mental picture of what you want. Figure out in detail. Write out what you want, and more or less how you are going to set about getting it. Follow the architect who draws the blueprint of a house in detail before it becomes a reality. Don’t bother about the likely setbacks and obstacles, tackle them when and if they come. Keep this slogan before you:

“They Can Conquer Who Believe They Can”

Once you set about getting what you want, don’t let anything stop you. Follow the example of a great person who said: “I’ve been up and down all my life. Lots of people said I was through; but I never thought much about it. I always was too busy to worry about my troubles”. Stop worrying about troubles, and learn to face them. “Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble”, says G.W.Lyon. Keep that in mind. You can will your way to success or failure, to victory or to defeat, to happiness or misery.

Life will pay any price you ask from it, only thing is don’t approach the ocean with a teaspoon!

A young boy sat on the bridge and watched the fish in the stream below. “I wish I could catch one of them”, he said to himself. A passerby, who heard him, stopped and said,

“My boy, if you really want to get your wish, stop wishing and start fishing”!

In the wake of the recent Mumbai attacks, an ordeal that terrorized Indians and shocked the world, the following anonymous letter addressed to Mr. Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, is just one of the many reactions from the tax-paying hard-working common man.

Dear Mr. Prime minister,

I am a typical mouse from Mumbai. In the local train compartment which has capacity of 100 persons, I travel with 500 more mouse. Mouse at least squeak but we don’t even do that.

Today I heard your speech. In which you said ‘NO BODY WOULD BE SPARED’. I would like to remind you that fourteen years has passed since serial bomb blast in Mumbai took place. Dawood was the main conspirator. Till today he is not caught. All our bolywood actors, our builders, our Gutka king meets him but your Government can not catch him. Reason is simple; all your ministers are hand in glove with him. If any attempt is made to catch him everybody will be exposed. Your statement ‘NOBODY WOULD BE SPARED’ is nothing but a cruel joke on this unfortunate people of India.

Enough is enough. As such after seeing terrorist attack carried out by about a dozen young boys, I realize that if same thing continues, days are not away when terrorist will attack by air, destroy our nuclear reactor and there will be one more Hiroshima.

We the people are left with only one mantra. Womb to Bomb to Tomb. You promised Mumbaikar Shanghai …what you have given us is Jalianwala Baug.

Today only your home minister resigned. What took you so long to kick out this joker? Only reason was that he was loyal to Gandhi family. Loyalty to Gandhi family is more important than blood of innocent people, isn’t it?

I am born and bought up in Mumbai for last fifty eight years. Believe me corruption in Maharashtra is worse than that in Bihar. Look at all the politician, Sharad Pawar, Chagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane, Bal Thackray , Gopinath Munde, Raj Thackray, Vilasrao Deshmukh all are rolling in money. Vilasrao Deshmukh is one of the worst Chief minister I have seen. His only business is to increase the FSI every other day, make money and send it to Delhi so Congress can fight next election. Now the clown has found new way and will increase FSI for fisherman so they can build concrete house right on sea shore. Next time terrorist can comfortably live in those house , enjoy the beauty of sea and then attack the Mumbai at their will.

Recently I had to purchase house in Mumbai. I met about two dozen builders. Everybody wanted about 30% in black. A common person like me knows this and with all your intelligent agency & CBI you and your finance minister are not aware of it. Where all the black money goes? To the underworld isn’t it? Our politicians take help of these goondas to vacate people by force. I myself was victim of it. If you have time please come to me, I will tell you everything.

If this has been land of fools, idiots then I would not have ever cared to write you this letter. Just see the tragedy, on one side we are reaching moon, people are so intelligent and on other side you politician has converted nectar into deadly poison. I am everything Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Schedule caste, OBC, Muslim OBC, Christian Schedule caste, Creamy Schedule caste only what I am not is INDIAN. You politician have raped every part of mother India by your policy of divide and rule.

Take example of former president Abdul Kalam. Such a intelligent person, such a fine human being. You politician didn’t even spare him. Your party along with opposition joined the hands, because politician feels they are supreme and there is no place for good person.

Dear Mr Prime minister you are one of the most intelligent person, most learned person. Just wake up, be a real SARDAR. First and foremost expose all selfish politician. Ask Swiss bank to give name of all Indian account holder. Give reins of CBI to independent agency. Let them find wolf among us. There will be political upheaval but that will better than dance of death which we are witnessing every day. Just give us ambient where we can work honestly and without fear. Let there be rule of law. Everything else will be taken care of.

Choice is yours Mr. Prime Minister. Do you want to be lead by one person or you want to lead the nation of 100 Crore people?

As we move on with our busy lives, the memories of those 4 grueling days are already fading away from our minds, and so will this message. I wonder if it is this selfishness on our part, one of the reasons why we, the people, are always reactive to terrorism instead of proactively finding ways to stop it. If so, who is really responsible? The Government? You & Me? Or Both?

Today we hear a lot about makeovers. It’s all about appearances these days with people opting in for extreme makeovers from their own looks to their pets, cars, houses et al. Can anything and everything in our lives be “made over” these days? What about our moral identity? I mean our ethics, our honesty, truthfulness, our commitment to do the right thing, caring for others, our true beliefs… can we do a makeover on all these moral values?

I’ve seen that people with a strong sense of moral values don’t always win. Their moral mind drives them to make the morally correct choice. If their decision works out for them, they’ll call it luck. If not, it’s fate and they’ll succumb to it.

I have a friend who was working as a Team Lead for a technical team in a MNC (Multi National Company) and had an IJP (Internal Job Posting) interview in her office for an Operations Manager post. My friend is a strong believer of ethics and her moral values. So, even though she had a friend (an insider) who could pull some strings for her in the interview panel, who could have maxed her chances of securing the job – my dear friend would do no such thing. She decided to play by the rules.

She called it her fate when she did not get the job. But little did she know at the time that the IJP was just a formality. Everything was pre-planned; pre-decided. She had no chance to begin with. Was it really fate?

Is this what one gets for being truthful and ethical in this world? My friend would have made a great Ops Manager. She was very good technically and had impressive people management skills. Instead, someone far less qualified got the job while my friend was asked to wait another 3 months before she would be allowed (as per company rules) to apply for the next IJP.

I believe there are a lot of situations like these in each of our lives, especially in today’s corporate world, where we are subjected to politics, favoritism’s, backbiting and many more morally incorrect ways to get what we want. We are forced to choose a path where we have to consider having a moral makeover. When did this become the norm?

Choosing a wrong way and then claiming that it is for something right, does it really make it right?