How servant leaders get stuff done.. in the real world

Servant leaders in the real world. How do you get stuff done?

Here’s what I’ve learnt from seeing some operate, seeing some not, reading the Bible and well, from AA.

- Agree with every view, then do what you believe is best
- Don’t talk much, at all
- When you talk, make sure it is one-on-one, especially to people you disagree with
- Give credit all the time to someone else, especially when you deserve the credit
- Always be early – for everything
- Have a vision – then be willing to trash it at any time
- Pray

The Lomu effect, on India

Cable TV hit India in the 1990s and I devoured sports like a hungry lion.

My loyalties were soon to be decided on the back of 24/7 ‘live’ coverage of global sports.

A colleague, half Welsh, aligned me with Manchester United.

A basketball mate suggested not to look beyond the Lakers.

And then, there was Jonah Lomu.

Rugby is to Indians what kabaddi is to the Kiwis; until the 1995 World Cup happened.

I watched Jonah Lomu.

He converted a small-town boy in India into a rugby fan, but much more, into a Lomu fan.

Forever.

Adios, Jonah Lomu.

Why cliches matter

Clichés matter.

They exist in the humdrum of verbose human communication for that precise moment to stab your soul.

Then, the cliché is part of your being and you wear it, every day, like underwear.

My dad died a year ago and with each passing day I have missed him more.

Time has, in the year gone by, acted only like a butler - drawing out vintages from the memory larder – succulent hors d'oeuvres of delightful joy; then pain-full courses of opportunities missed.

Cliché? You will only realise what someone is worth once they are gone.

Miss you dad.

Would you shoot me? No, says my Muslim friend... That's good enough for me

Some of my closest friends are Muslim.
We sit across the table and can feel the strain of the Paris attacks on our conversation.
The Muslim goes out of his/her way to condemn the attack.
The non-Muslim, myself, avoids the topic entirely – shuffling past the question: Do you support Daesh?
It must be asked, surely.
Sitting far away from the insanity of what happened in Paris I can feel the sands shifting.
Would you shoot me if we were on two opposite sides of a religious war? No, says my Muslim friend.
That then is enough for me today.

No, no Anthony Martial, that's not the LVG way

Anthony Martial took the ball and ran straight at the defence in the final third of the pitch.

Rooney does not do that.
Ander Herrera does not do that.
Juan Mata does not do that.
Louis Van Gaal does not do that.

The possession and precision Van Gaal philosophy speaks to a Barcelona-like tiki-taka, but pronounced more tic-tac-toe.

A formula to win.

Now, Martial will be benched, then schooled in the Van Gaal way.

He will return and run at the backs no more. He will pass the ball more, score less.

Man Utd will still win of course.

Man Utd's LVG era begins now

Rooney did not know who Martial was. Neither did I.
I did not know who he was despite watching him play Arsenal in the Champions League last season.
The Louis van Gaal Manchester United era now truly begins.
All but a few of the key legs from the Fergie era are gone.
Angel Di Maria explains it best: Van Gaal simply points to his philosophy when a player argues.
Follow it, or fall out.
It’s a precise philosophy of football played in a deliberate manner that demands extreme levels of craft.
Specific movements with intent, drive and skill.

Cheers! No more...

You drink playfully; then gainfully.
You drink aggressively; then lushfully.
Like the great and wise men who drank themselves to death, you drink committed to thought and creativity that is insane.
All the while, it’s all about you… and it’s good, great, glorious.
Then, you cross the line.
You now drink alcoholically.
And it’s done. You can drink no more.
It’s not about you anymore.
Others now matter. They matter more. Much more.
In their joy and healing alone lies your sanity.
One day at a time, you must climb down from the mountain on which you were perched.

Chicharito... surely LVG... surely...

I am an unabashed Manchester United fan, and, being Indian, suffice it to say I have been from… let’s see, 1996.

I worked with an Anglo at the time, his father was Brit propah, he was football propah, and he told me, follow Man U, back ‘em.

I did and have ever since.

I am an unabashed fan of Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez, and believe Louis Van Gaal and Old Trafford must keep him and use him in the last 20 minutes of games; especially when losing or drawing.

Real experience, die-hard commitment… ‘Chicharito’ is lethal… Utd must know that.

Making India Awesome – really?

At what level of literary nous did the industry that wheels Chetan Bhagat’s machinery think the above title works?

Pseudo-intellectual? Unfinished book? Writer generally struggling? All me.

For all the reading and writing that goes into achieving the above trippier-than-thou status, even for the evolving Indian middle class, millions added each month, grasping for better, conversant English as their aspirational channel to a global being – Making India Awesome - is crap.

I don’t know the demograph of Bhagat’s readers, though I did catch a woman at the dentist who, in Hinglish,
effused about the latest Bhagat.

Awesome for her?

Breast-feeding - nip and tuck for a life or two

My wife would not hold my hand and walk down a street where a school she taught in was.

But, she would breast-feed our three children anytime, anywhere; with a certain modesty thrown in of course.

There is that sense of fierce motherhood – displayed across nature – that is intrinsic to who she is as a person.

The breast-feeding debate and those on the nay side of the nipples might struggle to deal with the reality of that mother instinct in women.

Perversion, shame, these words mean little when a life is at stake.

And when that life is human…

Final countdown, let's go

Daesh in Middle East.
Donald Trump as US President.
The rise of Artificial Intelligence.
All in place for the final countdown to humanity’s great, big finish.
Throw in some plot-uppers – massive earthquakes, melting ice, space travel and that has me pondering; what is the future of the world I am leaving to my children?
Or, am I to be leaving my children to determine the future of this planet?
Evolutionary hubris of the general homosapien genus is creating two poles with no in-betweens.
Religion will divide. Spirituality will become the refuge.
And all the time the individual will isolate.

Ginormous 2, newspapers clicked, swiped, done...

Every newspaper conference I have attended in the last three years has tried to let newspapers know gently they are in the throes of death.

End of the newspaper era as the Gen-Xers know it.

Gen-Y are the cross-over folks, split between enjoying the feel and smell of newsprint on the pot and then, swiping the tablet on the Tube to work.

Gen-Z. Click, swipe, done.

News is now consumed continuously in feeds flowing into one big ginormus stream of information from social media, cue FB, Snapchat and the like.

The journalist, therefore, must evolve or die.

I’m dead.

LVG, di Maria, and the ginormous Asian following

Lousi van Gaal is archaic, prosaic, indulgently smart and belligerently self-assured about his football philosophy.

How many big words could I cram into one sentence?

A bit like an LVG quip when he is trying to take a dig at an interviewer.

LVG has been around a long time and so, has literally seen it all happen in the transfer market – several times over, and then some.

His take-it-as-it-comes handling of the Angel di Maria situation does ease the nerves of Manchester United’s ginormous Asian fan following.

LVG will do it with the kids if he has to. Go…

How many ways can you get nude for public viewing?

I was funky. Then, I was 40. Realisations begin to hit me like Kardashian posts on Instagram.
One is that Miley Cyrus is creating a neo, ultra, futuristic, ethno-chic, cultural bubble.
How many ways can you get nude for public viewing?
Does that reaction date me?
I scan my hard- (wink) drive and come up with Sam Fox, Pamela Anderson, Sharon Stone and Jennifer Lopez as the lusty levelers on my journey from pimples to diabetes.
None are a patch on Miley.
It’s far from sexual now. It’s a Miley statement, speaking a language that I just don’t understand.

Forward to the past

Just before dad passed away, my mum and he got an iPad. My mum has since discovered the ability to forward emails on the device.
There are emails floating out there, by the millions, that are worth forwarding, but that I do not want in my inbox.
When your mum forwards something, a conscience-like prick in your hassle-filled daily demeanour prompts you to open it.
My pop-in-law also passed and my mum-in-law on WhatsApp has discovered the forward.
Takes me back to when email first burst into our lives and forward it was.
Mums, enjoy. This too shall pass.

Dudes on the mic... McEnroe to G-Nev

What qualities must a veritable sports commentator possess?
Nous, that comes not from watching, studying, reading, following a game; but from having played it at the highest level.
Dry wit, that, which like a dry martini tingles and tangles but does not gush or slush.
A rounded voice, that allows the ears to be eased into the visual spectacle assaulting the senses.
Gary Neville has some.
John McEnroe has some.
Geoff 'my grandmum' Boycott has some.
Shane Warne… ?
Watching Wimbledon and the Ashes is as much about McEnroe and Boycott, as is watching Champions League football with G-Nev.

Ouch, Iker-Bastian reality football... must hurt

Iker Casillas to Porto and Bastian Schweinsteiger to United.

I have repeated that a couple of times this morning trying to wrap my head around it – intentionally avoiding the footballing cliché ‘like so-and-so wraps his foot…’

Both, one-club men and when you run through the stats, one-man clubs.

There is the reality of football as business (and I intentionally avoid the Blatter pun).

The European Super Clubs – Real Madrid and Bayern Munich - that birthed these two rest as much on the legacy of a great past, as on the drive for current success.

It must hurt fans. Badly.

In search of rock bottom

To the extent that money is important to me, going bankrupt will be one measure of a rock bottom.
It has never been. So I have been bankrupt four times.
To the extent that possessions are valued highly, not having them or losing them, could trigger the rock bottom clause in the contract of my sanity.
Possessions? Not really. Not really at all.
Then there are people. How badly have you destroyed relationships, savaged people’s self-confidence, wreaked havoc on their belief in life?
Above all that matters. And that rock bottom hits home the hardest, then. Killing me softly.

Dis-connection, the age begins

The withdrawal of human kind from personal interaction into a virtual space of existence cannot be good.
Or can it be that I am so not clued into this new reality that a generation gap for my age group is much more than crossing the smartphone divide?
Is the congruous opinion of today’s humans that it is good to text, tweet or post, rather than meet, greet and say hi?
Note: No radical terrorist attack has targeted the channels of this new existence – the internet. No attacks to destroy the internet or internet connectivity.
Age of online humans begins.

Sloth it

How hard do you have to work at being slothful?
Given that it figures on the list of seven deadly sins, I imagine sloth has been a genuine concern for homo sapiens for 3,000 years, at least.
Does ‘lazy’ do sloth full justice.
If, I, as a 40-year-old looking for spiritual evolution consider that sloth may be standing in the way, might I suggest that sloth then is a state of being.
The being operates from a position of not doing anything that involves the disruption of comfort as defined by the prevailing idea of the era. Doing nothing.

Humans primed for extinction

As the powers that push media releases have called it – The sixth extinction of the world has begun.

There are some signposts that do suggest a reverse evolution, or a devolution, if you will.

Everybody has a tattoo. The emergence of middle of the ages IS rule. The anti-social movement of humans from personal contact to contact via internet – every increasingly, only via internet.

Not a single film that portrays a future of hope and/or meaning, instead the great emergence of magical-mythical creations (cue Game of Thrones).

The psyche of humanity has reached what I believe is peak consumption.

As black as Dolezal

Deluded, a liar, a freak. Rachel Dolezal may be all of those for claiming to be black when she is white.
But Rach has the big-up from me for sure.
All of us have at some point in time been black. And I don’t mean skin colour – Black as in the culture.
I wore the cap, ff-ed the lingo, yo-yo-ed the hood and rapped. Yes, rapped.
No, I did not represent any community in my black mode, nor any front-end service work.
But, to be black is, at some point in time, what you must be to have life.

Game of Thrones: One for One

As a wordsmith, those catchy one-liners are like a slash of butter melted on top of a juicy steak.
Prime rib being an overall well-written script, of course.
As the world is enraptured with the season finale of Game Thrones, I decided to watch what the fuss was all about.
Began with Season One. All in two days. Like a fungus it grows on you.
Really, only two things at the end of it.
This one-liner: “Anything said before the use of the word ‘but’ in a sentence does not matter.”
And, Sean Bean cannot hold a season

Pacman vs Money = Faith vs Mammon

Manny Pacquiao will fight on faith.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. on money.
That is the sub-plot of this mega-clash of the dying art-form of pure, thoroughbred prize-fighting.
Given that at this level it is about thoroughbreds, their pedigree is only quotable when they are in the ring.
Mayweather outside the ring is Money.
Pacman outside the ring is a Believer.
Politician, singer, basketball player are all second to his new God-foundedness.
This is why this boxing match is more than just claim for title of best pound-for-pound fighter since Mike Tyson.
It is Faith vs Mammon.
Let the fight begin!

What now?

What now, of words that won’t come?
Guilt, shame, condemnation washed clean in the flood of grace; All ideation and creative inspiration washed away as well.
Ctrl, Alt Dlt – hard-drive cleaned out.
What of that desire to move the world to joy… or pain?
Close my eyes. Breathe deeply.
Cut wood, fill water.
Do the work. Write for discipline.
Believe. It will come.
If it doesn’t, rest in the grace.
Maybe, the words are all gone.
Maybe, it simply is a time to listen. To listen now, forever.
Maybe, the best of what I had to say is said.

Creative junk-ie

The best creative advice I received came from two creative junkies who understood the discipline involved in the process.
One said, write every day at a fixed time, whether you want to or not, whether you can or not.
Fix the time, write.
The other, a painter, shared how she did not hold an exhibition till she had done like over 1,000 paintings – good, bad, ugly.
“Your work is not worth public viewing until you have exhausted yourself attempting every creative inspiration to aspire for perfection; even then it may not be,” she said.
Here I am, writing, again.