Learning leadership from a train journey

The more I think I should not be blogging on personal opinions, the more I am getting tempted to throw my personal views. However, the incident was interesting hence thought of a mention on my blog. There will a consistent rule on my blog. Any idea which may rouse negative thoughts will be supported with literature and analysis available and any positive thoughts will be stated as is. The reason is simple, if I feel strongly negative of something it needs to be substantiated with research and literature and not be on my mere judgement. I hope I am able to reduce the effect of judgement from my articles.

Recently, I was traveling from Bangalore to Chennai in a train. One of my co-passengers were a retired professor of accounting and control from some university in Chennai. As soon as he saw the "HBR on The Mind of the Leader" his immediate reaction was you will learn more leadership from talking to leaders than reading books. I wanted to avoid a debate in the train. It helps no one and with my schedule of job, course work for exec-MBA it's really hard for me to find time to read a book which I did not want to spoile. Yet, I decided to talk to him and be a non-contributor. There are two distinct points he made although in very crude terms we will have lots of examples in lreal life to substantiate.

1. Leadership is about being a good listener
2. To be a successful leader it's important to be a good follower in early part of your life

I found both of these viewpoints unique in someway and very nice. Of course the HBR analysis does not talk about these anywhere. Some learning which only gets to you when you grow grey hair may be :-)

Lateral Marketing and Hindu Hymns

The other day I wrote a review on Lateral Marketing by Philip Kotler and Fernando Trias de Bes.

However, more interestingly I was getting some crank calls on my cell phone for last couple of months. Same number and always it would get disconnected as I pick up my phone. Finally, I decided to block the number called up my cellphone provider who asked me to register a police complaint. I realized that blocking a call in Indian phone system is next to impossible so I decided to put the number in my do not pick up list in the phone and relaxed. One day when I looked over to realize that the phone is actually flashing backlight means it was ringing again from the same number and when I picked up it got disconnected.

I called back and to my surprise a PCO (public call operator) picked up the phone. I told her if I get one more call then I am going to give their number to the police. She is doing it for a living and more over the place is some 500 miles away from where I live. And finally she admitted that some one used to call into my number because I had a nice hello tune which is basically a small piece of music that is played when you are waiting for the other person to pick up her phone. Luckily or unluckily I have the Hanuman Chalisa (Hymn for the great lord Hanuman) as my Hello Tune and there are enough people you would like to listen to this. I didn't know what to say. I cannot say no to someone's religious sentiments.

However, it definitely made me wonder all religious groups in India can start their telephone radios where people can dial in and listen to their favorite devotional songs for free. More revenue for mobile operators, for some software development companies and greater penetration for the religious community. There are some definite gaps in this mobile space where newer products can come in.