Creating Desired Future

Well, who doesn't want to Create a Desired Future? The answer is always yes, but preceded by another question, "but how?". SoL South Foundation (a not-for-profit society), is an affiliate member of Society for Organizational Learning (SoL - www.solonline.org) started by Dr. Peter Senge and head quartered in Boston, USA. Sol South has been founded (I'm one of the founder member) with a view to bring frontier learning opportunities to India, has just announced a 3-day workshop titled "Creating Desired Future". This workshop draws concepts from Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline, Otto Shramer's Theory U, Eastern meditations and many other behavioral concepts.

The expected outcomes include:

• Clarity of one's desired future in many facets of life
• Clarity of the meaning one is seeking and personal preferences
• Clarity about internal blocks and leverages in relation to the desired future
• A short-term prototype of the roadmap towards the desired future.

The workshop is led by Halasyam Sundaram (a sociologist and a OD consultant), Raja Chidambaram (Consultant in the areas of Change and Leadership) and Dr. Vinay Dabholkar (an Innovation consultant).

I recommend the workshop to anyone that wants to create a personal vision for themselves. I want to share my story on how I got benefited from a similar workshop twice (led by Raja Chidamabaram).

It was in early 2003, I had started feeling a little restless. I had completed 10yrs in the very first company in my professional life. Though there was no problem per se with the organization that I was working, I was feeling stuck, my own learning had gone down considerably low, was sitting pretty in a comfort zone, I was plain reacting to events every day as there were no goals to aspire and therefore no growth. Above all there was absolutely no work-life balance. It was under such circumstances my first personal vision workshop was held. The outcome changed my life for ever. First, I came-up with a tag line for myself - Contribute, Learn, Enjoy. These 3 seemingly simple words have had a major influence in my life and continues to inspire me in all facets of life. I set out with a 5-year goal to increase my capacity to contribute (at office, at home and to society). I drew up a financial management plan till 2020 (as I wanted to retire in 2020), set out goals to have vacations at regular intervals (both within India and abroad). My personal and professional lives were integrated and I can proudly say that I've been enjoying a near perfect work-life balance (though one suspects, my wife won't entirely agree).

One great thing about the discipline of setting goals is that lot of such things become a habit and gets routinized and freeing your mind to focus on bigger and better things. For example: I had a goal of taking 3 local vacations every year and having a vacation abroad once every 3 years. Now, we regularly take local vacations during kid's winter, christmas and summer holidays. We have visited Mauritius and Singapore/Malaysia by now. We have finalized a 18-day Europe travel in 2010 and thinking about a self-drive vacation in Newzealand (2013). My investments are categorized for my retirement, towards children's education, contribution to society and for major household expenses. The plan is stable and continues for the sixth year running. These two have become so mechanical - my investment plan for the entire takes about one sunday in an entire year and I have long and growing list of places to visit and just keep ticking them off.

Having stabilized basic facets of life, in 2007, I felt the need to do this exercise again. This time, I was trying to see how I can grow professionally. In this exercise, I came up with "Facilitating Impact through Innovation. Contribute. Learn. Enjoy". I really don't say this is my life purpose, but it is something very close to that. One immediate decision of this exercise was that I left my cushy job at an MNC (as I was not doing much over there) and joined a little known start-up of sorts which I thought would help me to "change the world" in some way. I also decided to advance my goal of "retire from salaried job" by 2016 and become an independent consultant. My career goals are now fairly well articulated and are in line with the theme Facilitating Impact, which incidentally is the name of this blog. When I go for my half yearly retreats, I evaluate myself on the personal vision that I have set for myself and set goals which are inline with my personal vision.

I'm a big believer in the concept of personal vision. It can be so inspiring. It can be so fulfilling. It cuts out all the crap, all the noise around as you know where you are headed. It also makes you own up your mistakes and take responsibility for your own future. All lame excuses on your manager, spouse, dog, city you live-in and other things like "you don't know how my situation is different" goes away. It liberates you from the constraints imposed by the organization and helps you chart your own course, within the boundaries, as you are always focused on what you want. It gives a great amount of clarity and you won't be influenced by the external rewards (or lack of it) as you are driven by a vision. Your own one. Created by you.

I strongly recommend this workshop to everyone wanting to lead fulfilling lives. Even for those who are doing well. I'm promoting it not because its a SoL South event, but because of the impact it has made in my life and because I know all the three trainers personally for over 10years now. I can guarantee that this could be one of the best investment that you could ever make for yourself. Vinay Dabholkar, one of the trainers, shares his experience from one of the earlier workshops here.

The event is planned on 8th, 9th and 10th of October. Its a residential program to enable participants to focus, share ideas with trainers and fellow students, and to have space for quiet reflection. The fees are Rs.15,000, 12,000 and 9,000 for corporate sponsored, self-sponsored and for folks from not-for-profit respectively. 10.3% service charges are extra. The fee covers accommodation on double occupancy basis and include vegetarian food. It would be held at Search Training Center, Koppa Village on Bannerghatta Road.

Feel free to contact me (ramp.ramp@gmail.com, mobile +91 990 190 1717) or the trainer Halasyam (halasyam.sundaram@gmail.com, mobile +91 94433 45130) directly for more details.

Thank you very much,


RamP!
ramp.ramp@gmail.com

SoL South Foundation: A not-for-profit community

I have been heavily influenced by Peter Senge's work and especially his celebrated book The Fifth Discipline. I've tried to practice the disciplines and have undertaken "personal vision" exercise twice (in 2002 and in 2007) which has greatly improved both my personal and professional life.

Last year, Raja Chidambaram, a friend, mentor and a leadership consultant called and invited me to join the governing board along with him and several other highly distinguished folks, to start a not-for-profit community under the aegis of SoL (Society for Organizational Learning). I was naturally thrilled and excited to see how we can bring SoL's concepts for the benefit of people in India.

SoL, is an intentional learning community composed of organizations, individuals, and local SoL communities around the world. A not-for-profit, member-governed corporation, SoL is devoted to the interdependent development of people and their institutions in service of inspired performance and meaningful results. SoL serves as a space in which individuals and institutions can create together that which they cannot create alone. The purpose is to discover (research), integrate (capacity development) and implement (practice) theories and practices of organizational learning for the interdependent development of people and their institutions and communities such that we continue to increase our capacity to collectively realize our highest aspirations and productively resolve our differences.

The governing board of SoL South Foundation is a very diverse set that includes an innovation consultant, two leadership consultants, CEO of a mid-sized IT/ITeS organization, someone who is running an NGO for ages now, a healer and wellness advisor, two IT professionals that include me, two HR professionals and a sculpter. We have been meeting every quarter in Chennai and Bangalore for the last 9 months to chalk out the vision and the action plan. One such meeting was with Jeff Clanon, Director of SoL, who introduced us to the various activities of SoL and helped us formulate a vision and an operating plan. We also registered SoL South Foundation with the Registrar of Societies and approval from SoL. We want to kick-start our activities publicly by offering SoL's flagship two day program Foundations for Leadership.

• Apart from offering the standard SoL courses, the broader vision for SoL South Foundation include:
• To discover, integrate and implement theories and practices for theinterdependent development of people and their institutions.
  
• To unearth the systems and practices, models and methods that were helping sustenance of culture, knowledge maintenance, and holistic systems and practices for the growth of individuals, institutions and organizations.
• To discover the systems, the basis and practices that are integrative in nature amongst body mind and soul of individuals, institutions and organizations
• To evolve a healthy and effective method of dialogue process which can be effectively used in different areas like political, communities, institutions, diverse cultures, conflicting situations, differential socio economic stratum of society, multi-linguistic groups, etc so as to promote collaborative communities, and institutions which can accommodate co-existence with difference through research, studies relating to different fields, conducting field works, examining suitable dialogue stage, etc and developing capabilities of people, systems, processes and skills in such areas as may be needed.
  
• To help build schools and other learning institutions the principles and practices of quantum and continued learning models and methods and systems
• To research and document alternative learning methods, systems, and models in health promoting areas both physical and psychological in nature in India and other neighbouring countries that holistic, systemic and complete and dessiminate the knowledge through different formats like publishing, lectures, and hands on training in curative and disease preventive areas for people and institutions.

The vision may sound grandiose, but simply put the aim is to apply the principles of learning organizations for the betterment of individuals, organizations, communities and schools. The governing board is excited about the vision and is determined to make a difference. Some of the board members have put in lot of time, money and efforts to get the community started. I plan to contribute through some research work this year.