My favourite is Satyagraha, the opera about the life of Gandhi and his philosophy of non-violent resistance to injustice.
Satyagraha’s libretto is based on the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu scripture, and is sung in Sanskrit.
The music is hypnotic. You are slowly drawn into a series of typical Philip Glass loops able to lure your mind to a place of total surrender.
I listen to Satyagraha when I meditate or walk on the treadmill. It gives me a great sense of peace.
I went to see a performance of this opera last week at ENO. I liked it much more than their previous one in 2007. The scenes are more interesting and the singers have more personality. It was mesmerising…
Here is my favourite passage from the last act:
In what for others is night, therein is the man of self-restraint wide awake, separate from passion and hate, self-possessed and drawing near to calm serenity. This is the athlete of the spirit, whose ground remains unmoved, whole soul stand firmly on it. This is the fixed, still state which sustains even at the time of death the athletes of the spirit, who event then set forth, some to return, some never to return. Outstanding is he whose soul views in the selfsame way comrades and enemies, loving all alike.
Working on it…. It is all but easy. That’s why such a powerful reminder is important.
His approach to international M&A is different: “we quite genuinely tend to look at an acquisition as a partnership rather than an acquisition”.
“We don’t send planeloads of people into a new company. Instead, we only send a few integrators. That’s been the key interface.”
I particularly like his way of engaging employees from the acquired company, a process he calls “shared change”: “we share and adopt good practices across the organisation through performance-improvement teams…This gives employees in the acquired organisation a sense of confidence that they too have good things that the parent company is absorbing”.
Chatterjee admits that “it takes time to positively influence a large organisation”. But the secret is to build “trust in the sincerity of the shared vision”.
Trust might take longer to establish but once you are there, “things move faster; you don’t have to go around reassuring people”.
PAWA is creating a platform for women from across Asia – from Japan to Iran – to share ideas, talk about common concerns and mentor the next generation.
A number of highly accomplished female business leaders these days come from Asia. Thirty five per cent of the 50 top women in world business featured on Saturday in the Financial Times come from the region.
At the launch, I enjoyed listening to Sonia Lo. Sonia was born in Korea and has worked in international finance for Google and United News and Media. She is the founder of London-based Chalsys Capital Partners.
Her advice to professional women is that “pushing a closed door sometimes is not the answer”. Sonia uses self-esteem as her strongest motivator.
Diversity is no longer a pet project on the sidelines of corporate life.
A number of trends indicate that companies with a diverse workforce are likely to perform better in the years to come.
According to official data, the amount of mutual fund assets under management (AuM) is shifting from the Global North to emerging markets. AuM decreased by 10% in Europe in the past three years, while it increased by 37.6% in Brazil and Chile and by 19.2% in Asia including China, India and Korea.
Multinationals from emerging economies are engaging more and more with businesses in Europe and the US. Companies with a diverse staff will find it easier to understand these new business partners. A diverse workforce brings a mixture of experiences and resources that employers will be able to turn into a powerful competitive advantage when dealing with other parts of the world.
And let’s not forget that Generation Y is coming into the workforce and is looking for jobs that resonate with their values. Inclusion ranks high among them. Gen Y is used to being in contact with people from other cultures. Social networking and online games have turned their world into a digital orange.
Annette Verschuren, President and CEO of The Home Depot for Canada and Asia, believes that the business secret of the future will be about including and inspiring people who in the past we thought did not belong.
Bieneosa Ebite and I will be talking about Cross Cultural PR and Diversity at the CIPR in October. Bienosa is the managing director of Bright Star Public Relations and a founding member of the UK Black and Asian PR Networking Group, which aims to encourage diversity in the PR industry.
You might think I’m strange. But when I worked as a financial journalist, they would stimulate my thinking….
Like a mandala, I would look at them and they would give me a sense of clarity…. After a while, sentences would start flowing in my mind.
I haven’t found financial charts soothing lately.
But yesterday, I was glad to hear at a seminar that markets are showing signs of normalisation. Which doesn’t mean that the recession is over. But markets have at least stopped to be out of control and are experiencing some sort of stabilisation.
However, analysts believe that the UK and Europe will not be able to attract significant investment for a while.
The spotlight has moved to the East.
Most Asian countries already had their financial crisis in 1998. It enabled them to clean house and left their banks with strong balance sheets. On top of this, they were able to create high levels of self-generating demand.
China and India are continuing to grow, and most importantly, their middle-classes are growing. International capital is being lured by the prospect of huge sales volumes.
Communications and marketing are right at the core of this trend.
With little growth to be expected in the West, many of the companies we are working for are increasingly looking at China and India.
One of the first tasks they will have to master is reaching out to audiences and engaging with consumers in these markets.
Jag believes that what the world is currently experiencing is not a clash but rather a fusion of civilisations.
Asia is becoming Westernised and the West is being strongly influenced by Asia (there are 6 million practicing Buddhists in the US today…).
All this is having an impact on international management practices. The result is fusion leadership, a mixture of Western and Asian styles. What Jag calls “a balance of orchestration and improvisation.”
He uses weddings as an example.
“A Christian wedding is orchestrated, while an Indian wedding is all about improvisation.”
When Jag’s grandniece got married in India four years ago, the priest got a phone call on his cell during the ceremony. Jag was horrified to see him take the call while nobody in the audience seemed to be upset. “You have forgotten India“, a relative teased him.
Budgeting in the West is sacrosanct. However corporate leaders will have to learn to combine strategic planning with flexibility, if they want to succeed in a globalised market place.
Jag believes that leadership is all “about shaping the expectations of others”. This is what the leader of the future will need to have in order to succeed:
1. Passion
2. Empathy
3. Competence
I was thrilled to see empathy high on the list. Finally! Let the post-modern era begin!
The potential implications of this project are mindboggling.
In India, a computer scientist, Dr Sugata Mitra has come up with the idea to give internet access to the illiterate children living in a slum next door to his modern, air-conditioned office.
He placed high-speed computers in a wall separating his part of town from the slum. Within hours and without instructions, the children started to browse the web. They were quick to figure out how to point and click.
Dr. Mitra is convinced that computers can bring prosperity to the world’s poor. It was his Hole-in-the-Wall project to inspire Vikas Swarup, the author of Slumdog Millionaire, the book that became a multi-Oscar-winning movie.
Half of India’s population (1 billion) is illiterate. 350 million among them live on less than a dollar a day. We can only begin to image what would happen to India’s society (and to those of other emerging economies) if Dr. Mitra is right.
I went to see a live performance of my favourite comedian, Russell Peters.
Russell’s energy is amazing.
When I heard that he would be performing at the o2 Arena, I couldn’t picture him reaching out to 18,000 people and engaging them in his fuzzy embrace the way he does on tape with a much smaller audience.
But he did. There is something about him that makes you feel included in everything he says. Forget presentation skills training! You want to learn how to reach out to an audience and bond with them? Go and listen to Russell Peters.
Russell is the most downloaded comedian ever. He owes his success to the power of the internet.
And it’s that power I felt the moment I entered the o2 Arena. I couldn’t believe that all those people were there just because they had seen one of his routines that began circulating on the web 5 or 6 years ago. It was so overwhelming….
I was also overwhelmed by the fact that, for some strange reason, I felt close to the other people there… Do we all identify with Russell’s jokes because we live abroad and at some point someone made fun of us? Is Russell’s humour a way to exorcise these experiences?
Who knows?!? I certainly love his routines. I know so many by heart. On Saturday, I even got the T-shirt that says $ 34.50 in Chinese-like characters. And I am going to wear it to the gym (yes…I will blog about the reactions…).
We went backstage and met Russell (in the photo with me and my husband Doug).
And look at us! Don’t we look related? As he says, it’s because his parents come from the Italian part of India…. Calcutta!!
It all started a couple of years ago when my friend Piero sent me this short video. Among the piles of junk he sends me (yes, it is true Italians are eternal children on a constant search for racy jokes), this video turned out to be a real gem.
Russell Peters is a Canadian comedian of Indian descent. He changed my life and the way I look at accents.
He has an incredible ear for accents. He goes over them in his head and puts them together in his mind.
He says he uses humour to help people feel better about themselves and their cultures.
The way he imitates not only Italians, but also his fellow Indians, Chinese, Jamaicans, Mexicans, etc. is incredibly funny and sweet.
It feels like a fuzzy embrace.
Let’s be honest, these days everybody is fed up with false political correctness that is so often used to dress up real offense and stereotyping.
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His approach to international 
Chatterjee
I used to find index charts soothing. 
Jag believes that what the world is currently experiencing is not a clash but rather a fusion of civilisations. 
