Swami Amritageethananda Puri's Speech
Touched were we by My Innocent Naughty Daughter. Who could have given a better explanation of the wayward MIND than Swami Amritageethananda? He put it very rightly and subtly that ‘managemind’ is the basic component that comes before ‘management’. The examples and excerpts from the lives of great, universal souls who are/were great managers like our Amma and Buddha, has instilled in us a sense of greater understanding of what the qualities of a real manager are.
“Knowledge should go only to the right minds”, Swamiji said (simple, but so significant). He further elaborated it with excellent small stories like the story of the great Vaidya Nagarjuna, who selected his assistant on the basis of their EQ and thought a learned person should have the will to use his knowledge for the benefit of others. Knowledge, according to Swamiji, imparted to the impure mind might prove fatal. He exemplified his statement by the 9/11 mishap where the pilot Mohammed Atta used his skills to crash into the WTC.
Lastly, Swamiji stressed on the fact that Life is an incessant learning process and one has to be humble enough to learn at every stage of life. To back this up, he made a mind-boggling analogy of one’s Learning to a glass tumbler that contains water. If the glass is full of water, then there is no possibility of pouring more. In the same manner, if we are not humble enough to learn, then there can absolutely be no learning at all. He compares the humbleness required to learn to that of Bharatha (who took Rama’s Paduka on his head), and to that of George Washington (who, though being a General, was humble enough to help the ordinary laborers in their task of pushing a heavy log).
Overall, Swamiji, through his short but sweet speech, enlightened us and gave us a neovision into learning and management as an art of self-discovery and minding minds. We would surely apply these learnings into our lives for our own good. At the outset, we just can say, “Great minds, great thoughts”.
Mr. Krishan Dhawan, the Managing Director of Oracle India Ltd has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services and IT enabled services sector, having worked with Bank of America for 23 years across Asia Pacific and American markets. He is an alumnus of IIM, Ahmedbad, 1978 batch.
During his talk with the management students of ASB, he touched upon a variety of topics ranging from his personal experiences to business environment and the expectations from a manager in today’s dynamic corporate scenario.
He shared with the students, his experiences in the banking sector – his role at the front end of the business, in relationship management and changing customer needs.
Apparently, Mr. Krishan Dhawan after a long satisfying stint in the banking sector was on the look out for a new venture. Coincidently Oracle India was also looking out for a new MD and the rest, as they say, is history.
He talked about Oracle’s global business strategies, products, competitors; future plans regarding India and scope for new markets in the developing countries. In particular, he explained the nature of Oracle products – functional packages as well as vertical specific IT integrated solutions catering to the 3 tiers- databases, middleware, and enterprise level applications like ERP. He supported the open source movement.
He concluded the speech by emphasizing the importance of culture and its impact on values followed by people, enumerating the essential skills required to manage a global company. Lastly, he talked about the importance for budding managers to keep an open mind and be receptive
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